


For Better or for Hearse

by KouriArashi



Series: The Sum of Its Parts [13]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Detective Stiles, F/M, Family, Hunter Politics, M/M, Multi, Murder Mystery, Mystery, Pack Dynamics, Pregnancy, Weddings, Werewolf Hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-09 01:44:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 47,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4328973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KouriArashi/pseuds/KouriArashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles receives an invitation to a wedding that he didn't expect... but as usual, things aren't what they seem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everybody! Here we go again! By the demand of a whole ton of people, let's have some more Lucy "Wednesday Addams" Arnelle!
> 
> This chapter is a little on the short side, because it's mostly set-up, but I promise we'll kick things right into gear. =D
> 
> There's a mild trigger warning for people being forced to do things they don’t want to do in order to protect people they care about. There isn’t any noncon in the "surprise" relationship, but let’s just say that consent was very unenthusiastic and would be open to interpretation as dubcon, actually from the point of view of both participants. If you want more details, please feel free to message me on [my tumblr](http://gingersnapwolves.tumblr.com)! I can reply privately or keep it under a cut to avoid spoilers for those who don't want them. <3

 

Everything seems normal until the invitation arrives.

Things in the hunter community have settled down a lot over the winter. In a way, the insane events that had been triggered by Henry Argent and orchestrated by Sally Stoddard had done a lot of good for the ongoing quiet war. Two of their strongest opponents had been taken off the board, and without them, their opposition didn’t have the pull to keep the war ongoing.

Ariah Nazario was dead, and her younger sister Vanessa had taken charge of their family. Only a select few knew the exact details of Ariah’s death. Vanessa had publicly announced that her sister had died of old age. Some people were skeptical, but Vanessa quite plainly didn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thought. She said what she had to say and then let people say whatever they wanted to say, without dignifying it with a response.

Vanessa wasn’t exactly on their side, but she wasn’t on the other side, either. She held the same belief as Hannah Winchester: she wasn’t getting involved. She didn’t tell what other hunters what to do on their territory, and she doesn’t appreciate anyone trying to tell her what to do on her own. That’s not great, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

What had happened on Henry Argent’s territory was an entirely different story, and not one that had made anybody happy. Julien and Chris had had a long discussion about what they were going to do. It had been in the Argent family for generations; in fact, it was their original territory after moving from France. After talking about it, they had decided that Julien’s oldest son, Sam, was ready to take over. Henry and Rose had had a number of good lieutenants, and he could always call his father for help if he needed it.

The problem was, by the time they had gotten it settled and Sam had gone up to meet with said lieutenants, Martin Drake had already gotten there and taken over.

It could have turned into a fight – Chris thought it should have – but Julien thought it would be better not to let things get out of hand. Martin Drake fights dirty, he says, and given the fact that Sam wasn’t even one hundred percent sure that he wanted the territory, maybe they should take this as a sign.

“So why does everyone hate Martin Drake so much?” Stiles asks Chris, at their first monthly meeting of his spring semester. They text semi-regularly, but Chris is organized and meticulous and prefers to sit down once a month and talk things over, particularly with the Conclave coming up. Stiles isn’t sure how big a deal it’s going to be, given the new lay of the land. There’s almost no way to plan ahead, and of course Stiles isn’t even invited. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s not going to attend – just that a lot of people will be unhappy if he does.

Chris rubs both his hands over his somewhat bristly scalp. He’s discovered that he likes having his hair really short. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“Hey, I’m not going anywhere,” Stiles says.

“More’s the pity,” Chris says dryly, and Stiles makes a kissy face at him. “The thing is, this isn’t the first time Drake has done this. He actually got the territory he has now by doing the same thing. That area used to be the territory of the Stojanovic family.”

“Stojanovic,” Stiles says. “I know that name, don’t I?”

“You do,” Chris says. “Dragan Stojanovic is one of the three elders that you met at the last Conclave, and he’s the only member left of what was once a thriving clan. Well, don’t get me wrong – they’re still a big presence in Serbia, Croatia, that area. But the American branch of the family was all wiped out in . . .” He rubs a hand over his head again. “2002, 2003 maybe?”

“What happened?” Stiles asks.

“Memory’s a little fuzzy,” Chris says. “They were killed by, I want to say harpies? But that was a long time ago. Anyway, Dragan was the only survivor. He retired from active hunting, and that’s when he became one of the elders.”

“And then Martin Drake swept in?”

“Then, like what happened with Henry’s territory this time, a few people sat down to talk it over. Dragan didn’t want to try to bring more of his family over, so they agreed to divide the territory up between Argent, Stoddard, and Arnelle. Those were the three bordering territories. But, just like what happened that time, by the time all the negotiations were done, Drake had already taken over. He was one of the lieutenants on the territory, so it was pretty easy for him to do it.”

“I don’t get it,” Stiles says. “My territory is a single California county, and it’s all I can do to keep up with that. Why would someone want to take over a hunting territory? No offense, but it’s not like you get anything out of it.” He frowns suddenly and says, “Unless you do. Beyond, you know, respect and recognition and,” he waves a hand, “yadda yadda.”

“Hunting isn’t really a yadda yadda sort of thing,” Chris says, and Stiles just shrugs. “But no, you’re right. A lot of hunters do it for the right reasons. To protect innocents, to help people. It’s why I do it. And yes, it’s a tight circle and the respect and recognition of your peers is just as important to us as it would be to any profession. Athletes compete, businessmen have rivalries – we have the same things motivating us as any people.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Stiles says. “But Drake only seems to be making enemies.”

“The thing is,” Chris says, “Drake wants to turn hunting into a for-profit business.”

“A what?” Stiles asks, startled. “How would that even work?”

“Well, the problem is that now we have to dive into the murky world of hunting financials,” Chris says. He looks up as Victoria walks in, holding two mugs of coffee and a tray of cookies. She gives Stiles her usual flinty glare, and he smiles merrily back at her. “So it shouldn’t come as much surprise to you that we don’t make a lot of money doing what we do. A lot of us have day jobs – some of us manage to combine them with our hunting stuff, and some of us don’t bother. But even so – day jobs might be enough to support ourselves and our families, but it’s not enough to buy ammunition or pay for travel. So most of us have backers.”

“Backers?” Stiles echoes.

Chris nods. “Usually people who are independently wealthy, who have some knowledge of the supernatural world, and understand why what we do is so necessary. Sometimes it’s family – I think Stella Jones is financed by her sister, who’s some big time bank CEO – and sometimes it isn’t.”

“So who’s your backer?” Stiles asks.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Oh, well, now I have to know,” Stiles says.

Chris doesn’t look amused, but he shrugs and says, “Bill Gates.”

Stiles blinks. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. He donates to a lot of charities. A million here or there to support various hunters is a drop in the bucket.” Chris takes a drink of his coffee. “Like the hunters themselves, the backers have their own prejudices and opinions. Plenty of them have supported one side of the war or the other at various times. People have theorized that the reason Stoddard hasn’t gotten involved is because his backers were urging to him to sit back, not get involved, until they could guess at who was going to win. And even though the backers don’t do any of the work, they can have enormous power over the hunters. If a hunter is smart, he’ll spread his financial support out, so if he loses a backer, it won’t be a huge problem.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Stiles says. “So back to Drake. Hunting for profit?”

“I’m not sure how he thinks it would work either, to be honest,” Chris says. “But you hear sometimes about, say, fire departments in rural areas. How everyone is supposed to pay their dues, and if you don’t pay, they will literally let your house burn down. That’s what happens when something that should be a public service becomes a for profit system. Healthcare is another example, although I suppose if we got started on that we’d be here all day.”

“Chris, you freakin’ socialist bastard,” Stiles says, chuckling, then gets back to the point. “How could hunting ever be for profit when so many people are totally ignorant of the fact that it’s even necessary?”

“That, I don’t know,” Chris says. “My guess is that Drake has some ideas. He’s very intelligent, and he’s also good with people. He has a sort of charm to him that wins over ninety percent of people instantly and makes the other ten percent dislike him intensely. This is how he took over the Stojanovic territory, and Henry’s, too. He didn’t go for the lieutenants so much as the backers. And I think he’s convinced a lot of them that for once, they’re going to get a return on their investment.”

“Sounds shady,” Stiles says.

“He’s incredibly shady,” Chris says. “In some ways, he’s like you. He bends the rules. He’s a strategist, and he’d rather make friends than enemies, but he’s not afraid to make enemies if he has to. So if you were a money-obsessed sociopath, you and Drake would practically be twins.”

“I’m not sure if I was just complimented or insulted,” Stiles says.

“I’m just saying. He’s not the sort of person who can be underestimated. And I think letting him take Henry’s territory was a mistake. I think he’s going to keep pushing until someone pushes back, and the more power he amasses in the meantime, the harder it’s going to be to shut him down.”

Stiles nods a little in response to that, and decides to neither argue nor agree. He knows that Chris is a highly intelligent man with an excellent grasp of strategy. But he also knows that Chris hasn’t exactly been stable in the aftermath of the spell that Sally Stoddard had put on him. He’s more aggressive in some ways, much more protective of the people he cares about. But at times he also seems to sink into a strange malaise, an indifference to the ongoing problems.

When Stiles had asked Allison about it – since he sure as hell wasn’t about to ask Chris himself – she grimaced and said that her father had remarked the other day that he’s coming to the realization that things aren’t going to get better. That no matter how much they gain, things will never truly be _right_. “It’s a scary conclusion,” he had said, “that the world will be just as terrible when you leave it as it was when you entered it.”

Stiles thinks that a part of that is because Chris feels like _he_ will never truly be right again. That no matter how much he puts himself back together, he’s stained now, in a way that nobody can fix. He killed innocents; he broke the Code. And no matter how many times people remind him that it wasn’t his fault, no matter how much he knows that, knowing and feeling are two separate things.

Chris’ complicated family history doesn’t help. Stiles remembers way back when he had first started associating with the Argents, how his father had said that pretty much the whole family was ‘batshit crazy’. Stiles had agreed. Gerard, Kate, even Henry to a certain extent – the specter of madness loomed over that family. He wonders if Chris worries that he’s going crazy, if by killing an innocent he’s somehow aligned himself with Kate.

There’s sure as hell nothing Stiles can do about any of that, and he can understand why Chris wishes they hadn’t let Drake get away with stealing the territory. Strategically, his logic seems sound.

Part of the problem, he thinks, is that after months and months of gearing up for some big showdown, the war had simply . . . petered out. Faded away. It wasn’t _over_ , but it seemed like it had peaked in a way. The balance had shifted with Ariah and Henry’s deaths, and suddenly the war was over. Or at least it seemed that way.

“Kind of anticlimactic,” Stiles says, summing up his thoughts.

Chris chews on his thumbnail and stares out the window. “No, it isn’t over,” he says. “This is just an intermission, that’s all.”

“How so?” Stiles asks. “The only person left who was really against us is Stella Jones.”

“That’s true,” Chris says. “Stella, Henry, and Ariah were pretty much the triumvirate that was driving the war forward. But we haven’t won. Far from it. Stoddard still has his prison. Stella, Drake, Stoddard, they all kill supernatural creatures without compunction, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them. Since Vanessa and Hannah Winchester have both taken a hands off approach, they won’t support us if we go after them. What we have now is a truce. It’s not peace.

“And let’s not forget that the Gutierrez family still exists, still has their own territory, and probably still hates us,” Chris continues. “I can’t help but feel like they’re laying low, gathering resources and biding their time. They’re not all as stupid as Ruben was. Agnes St. James is still out there, and of course, still hates us. We have a lot of enemies, Stiles, and they’re going to rally. This is just the eye of the storm.”

And the thing is, Stiles isn’t sure whether Chris is right or not. It might be that Chris is paranoid after what had happened to him. God knows that Stiles has had his share of useless paranoia. It’s hard not feeling like everyone’s out to get you after everything that had happened to them.

Since neither of them can be trusted, he asks Peter, who’s better at thinking logically, without emotions intruding. “He’s right and he’s not,” is Peter’s opinion. “The war isn’t over – make no mistake about that. But the good thing is that, although you have your share of enemies, they probably won’t work together. The Gutierrez family is too proud. Agnes is too much of a bitch. Nobody will work with Drake. And Stoddard, it seems, as much as the sane part of that family dislikes you, they don’t want to get their hands dirty taking care of you. They don’t want to align with a family like the Gutierrezes. So if you can fend them off one at a time, you’ll be fine. But you have the wild card.”

“Sally,” Stiles says glumly.

“Yes. Odds are that she’ll continue using these families as weapons against you, as she has in the past. But still, you’ve survived her so far. And now you know she’s coming.” Peter’s silent for a long minute. “It’s the Conclave you need to worry about. Someone’s going to make a move there. Impossible to predict who or how, but at least you know the when.”

“So what’s your advice?” Stiles asks dryly.

“Take the week of the Conclave and go to Rio de Janeiro,” Peter says. “Let the hunters kill each other. Problem solved.”

“Unless the bad guys win,” Stiles says.

“They’re all bad guys in my opinion,” Peter says, and Stiles doesn’t argue with that, because Peter has valid reasons to hate hunters, and that’s a discussion he doesn’t want to have again. He’s lucky they got through the discussion without Peter reminding him that he should just kill all his opponents and have done with it. And to be honest, the idea of taking the entire pack to Rio while the hunters duke it out is rather enticing. If only he could be sure that the world would still be there when they came back.

“We need more allies,” he says to Derek the next day. “I mean, for the Conclave. We need people that we can trust at our backs. Not just the Argents.”

“Well, we have Mikael,” Derek says, although he sounds somewhat dubious. “What about his daughter? Are you still talking to her?”

“Yeah, we text sometimes,” Stiles says. “She’s become an actual human being. Too bad we can’t say the same for her brother, but Annika says he spends all his time with his girlfriend and he doesn’t even care about werewolf hunting anymore. And Wednesday will be there, of course, even though I haven’t talked to her in a while.”

“Maybe we should,” Derek says. “Her territory is small, but she _is_ the head of her family, so she has a vote on that Council thing of theirs.”

“I don’t really think votes are going to be what we need,” Stiles says, “but yeah, I’ll shoot her an email.”

This conversation lingers in Stiles’ mind a few days later when he opens a plain cream colored envelope to read the following text:

 

~~//~~\\\~~

With great pleasure

You are invited to the union of

Lucy Arnelle

and

Martin Drake, Jr.

Saturday, the twenty-seventh of February

At three o’clock in the afternoon

Reception to follow

~~//~~\\\~~

 

Stiles puts down the envelope, stares into space, and says, “What the hell?”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies to the city of Bowling Green, Kentucky, which I'm probably representing with about as much accuracy as I wrote about The Dalles, Oregon. (Hint: I got basically everything wrong.)

 

“Yeah, we got one too,” Allison says. Stiles can hear her shuffling through papers on the other end of  the telephone. “Weird. This is only – Stiles, this is this coming Saturday. That’s only a week away.”

“I know,” Stiles says. He’s not exactly experienced with weddings – he went to a cousin’s once, when he was a lot younger, before his mother died, but that was it. But he does know from his father’s quiet talks with Melissa about whether or not they should tie the knot, they take some time to prepare. It has to be unusual for invitations to go out a week ahead of time.

If that were the only unusual thing about this wedding, he might be inclined to let it go. But it’s not even close. He’s e-mailed back and forth with Lucy ‘Wednesday Addams’ Arnelle for years, ever since they had met. Much of their correspondence was professional, asking if the other was familiar with certain types of monsters or had any information on how to deal with them. But he was always friendly, keeping her up to date on his exciting life, and she occasionally reciprocated. The last he had heard – which had to be six months prior at least – she had been dating a werewolf in her local pack named Calvin.

Putting aside how that could have ended badly, given the myriad number of possible problems, Stiles can’t think of anyone less likely to voluntarily marry Martin Drake’s oldest son and – since Drake didn’t abide by the primarily matriarchal hunter rules – heir.

“What do you think we should do?” she asks. “This invitation is to addressed to Mom and Dad, and then there’s another for me with an option of a plus one. No RSVP needed.”

“Yeah, they couldn’t insist on RSVPs if they’re only going to give people a week of notice,” Stiles says, but then adds, “Well, we’ve been off at school – did your parents say when the invitations arrived?”

“Just yesterday, Mom said,” Allison tells him.

“Okay, so it’s not just that they’ve been sitting around waiting for us to see them,” Stiles says.

“I get why they would have invited me,” Allison says. “Intermarriage between two hunter families is a big deal. But why invite you? No offense or anything.”

“Maybe they just invited a ton of people, figuring that with the short notice, only about half of them would be able to come,” Stiles says, but he’s already shaking his head. Something about this is weird. His Spidey senses are tingling. Before Allison has a chance to respond, he says, “Well, we won’t find out anything just by sitting around talking about it. Do you know if any of the hunters you talk with might now?”

“I’ll e-mail Sam; I think he and Wednesday kept in touch after the last Conclave,” Allison says, but she sounds dubious about it. “No one really talks to the Drake family. From the way they’re springing this on everybody, it seems obvious to me that he didn’t want anyone to have much of a chance to talk about it.”

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees. If hunter weddings are a big deal, he would think that they would want months to prepare. They would want to make sure everyone from the big families had a chance to clear their schedules and find a way to be there. So either the Drake family doesn’t want a lot of people there, or they’re banking on the fact that everyone is going to find a way anyway. “Pack meeting tonight, seven PM at the den. We’ll eat at six. Start the phone tree.”

“Roger that,” Allison says, and hangs up.

Stiles turns to find that his father has been listening in, and looking at the invitation. “You seem like you’re bursting with eagerness to tell me what you’re thinking.”

Tom gives him a somewhat weary look, but then says, “Well, I know that you know this girl a lot better than I do. I can’t argue with your assessment. But I also know that you tend to see shadow and conspiracy even when there isn’t any there. Not that I’m blaming you,” he adds, seeing Stiles open his mouth to protest. “God knows that you’ve had more than your fair share. But I think there’s a strong possibility that there’s a simple explanation for this.”

“Shotgun wedding?” Stiles says, quirking his eyebrows.

“Do they still have those?” Tom asks with a note of humor. “I didn’t think pregnancy out of wedlock was such a big deal anymore.”

“Well, this is happening in Kentucky,” Stiles says. That’s another thing he’s wondering about. The wedding is in Wednesday’s backyard, not Drake’s. Does that mean anything? Or is he overthinking, like his father suggested?

Tom gives a snort of laughter. “I meant, maybe two kids met and fell in love and decided to throw together a quickie wedding, but because intermarrying two hunter families isn’t that simple, Drake’s father made him send out invites. From what you’ve told me about him, he’d want a chance to brag that he’s adding more territory.”

“By hunter rules, he’s _not_ ,” Stiles says. “The territory would stay in the Arnelle family. Matriarchal society, remember?”

“True, but Drake doesn’t seem to play by those rules, so who knows what he’s thinking about it?” Tom shrugs. “And there’s always the possibility that they just didn’t want to wait to get married.”

“And that doesn’t seem sinister to you?” Stiles asks.

“It could,” Tom says, “but it might not.” He gives a fond smile and says, “I remember when your mother had to talk me out of a fifteen minute courthouse wedding because I just didn’t want to wait any longer to be her husband. She said both our sets of parents would have killed us and she was probably right, but if I could have married her the day I proposed, I would have.”

“Okay, that’s really sweet and also I’m going to cry, but you didn’t meet Wednesday,” Stiles says. “She isn’t like that.”

“Even the hardest women can fall in love,” Tom says. “Look at Victoria Argent.” He sees Stiles’ face and says, “I’m just saying, go into this with an open mind. Okay? That’s all.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, feeling grumpy.

He feels somewhat validated by the reaction of the pack later. Scott, Erica, and Derek all gape at him when he shows them the invitation. “Wednesday’s getting _married_?” Scott blurts out.

“Why?” Erica asks, and everyone gives a little snort of laughter, because Erica’s complete lack of interest in anything romantic and/or long-term is well known in the pack.

“It’s this thing people do when they fall in love, or so I’m told,” Boyd tells her, and she blows him a kiss.

“Martin Drake?” Danny is looking over the invitation. All of them know the hunter basics, but since Danny helped write and helps maintain the hunter database, he knows the names better than most of the others. “Isn’t that guy kind of old for her?”

“Martin Drake, senior, would be,” Stiles says. “But his only son and namesake is only a year or two older than us. So he’d be, I think, twenty-two to Wednesday’s nineteen. Not unreasonable.”

“Isn’t Drake the guy making moves on everybody’s territory?” Isaac asks.

“Yes, he is,” Stiles says. “Which does make me incredibly nervous about this. I mean, he already stole the two territories he has. Now, given hunter society, Wednesday should keep control of her territory, and Martin Jr. would become an Arnelle, rather than the other way around. But we don’t know if that’s something that he plans to honor.”

“Okay, but is that really our business?” Lydia asks. “I get that Drake might not be the world’s most stand-up guy, but this is hunter stuff.”

“No, it isn’t,” Stiles says. “It isn’t even remotely our business. Which is precisely why I’m bothered by this invitation.”

There’s a moment of silence and a round of nods.

“So,” Stiles says, “Who’s up for a trip to Kentucky?”

“Depends on how we’re getting there,” Boyd says.

Stiles grimaces. “We’ll fly, but we’ll do it commercial. I just so happen to have obtained fake identities for all of you, so we can do it under the radar. I don’t want anyone knowing what flight we’re on.” More paranoia, he thinks. It’s basically his way of life now. “And I know that we’re not fans of splitting up, but I don’t want to leave the territory unguarded, so . . .”

“Well, I’m going,” Allison says. “I was invited and everything.”

“If Allison’s going, I’m going,” Scott says, and Stiles thinks about making a pithy comment but decides against it. He’ll be glad to have both of them along, no matter how sickeningly sweet their romance is even after years together.

“I can go,” Erica says. “I liked Wednesday. She was my kind of bitch. If she’s in any trouble, I’ll beat the shit out of it.”

“Pass,” Danny says. “I’ve got a big computer project due on the Tuesday after the wedding. And don’t even say ‘we’ll be back by then’ because you know if we plan to be back by then for school reasons, then we’ll wind up, I don’t know, stranded in a desert somewhere.”

“Fair,” Stiles says.

“You’re my ride to school,” Mac says, “so if you’re going, I might as well go. Since the alternative is to take the bus, and yuck.”

“On the same note, if Danny’s staying, I’ll stay,” Boyd says. “Isaac?”

“Yeah, I’ll hang out here and take care of you two,” Isaac says, and Boyd rolls his eyes.

“I think I’ll sit this one out, too,” Lydia says. “I’m really loving my classes this semester, but they’re a lot of work.”

That’s six going and four staying, which isn’t exactly the best of divisions, but Stiles decides to roll with it. He’d rather have the backup with him, where there’s likely to be trouble, and he doubts that anyone’s actually using this as a diversion to make a move on his territory. Besides, he likes to let the pack have as much autonomy as possible. If this is how they want to split, he’ll go with it.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll make the flight arrangements. Go talk to your parents, all that jazz.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

The next day, everything’s been arranged and he’s at the Fresno airport sitting with his head between his knees, trying not to think about how he doesn’t need to add a fear of flying to his long list of phobias. Derek sits with him awkwardly, patting his back occasionally as he eases himself out of the panic attack. It’s difficult, since Derek has hated flying since long before Sally Stoddard crashed their plane.

“Do you want to call Gwen?” Derek asks.

“No, I’m okay,” Stiles says, repeating the calming mantras to himself to keep focused. “Just need a few minutes.” He reminds himself that nobody has any idea what plane he’s taking, that the security at a major airport is a lot better than at the private hangar that Franklin’s plane had left out of. They’ll be fine. Statistics about getting hit by meteors leap to mind. He wonders if those statistics actually help anybody.

“Here, we got you something,” Scott says, and shoves some coffee monstrosity in his hands. He laughs and starts drinking. They have about half an hour before they need to be through security, and he gets most of it down in that time.

Allison is the only one with a checked bag, because she needs one to bring her weaponry with her. Stiles stowed his .38 in that bag, so he doesn’t have to worry about that. He only has his backpack, which has a few changes of clothes and his toiletries, and his laptop bag. The others are packed about the same way. Derek has a bag that the others call his purse, but he grumpily insists they call a satchel. “Purses are for money. This is art supplies,” he said, when someone made a joke about him not wanting to look like a woman. “It has nothing to do with gender.” (“And everything to do with pedantry,” Stiles concluded, chortling, and Derek smacked him upside the head.)

The flight isn’t a short one, and Stiles is restless, but the others help keep him occupied. They touch down around four PM local time, which is still two PM California time, and they rent a car at the airport. Then it’s about an hour drive to Bowling Green, the small town that Wednesday is from, and where the wedding is going to be held.

They’ve made reservations at a hotel. Stiles would’ve been happy at a Motel 6, but any time he suggests something like that, Derek wrinkles his nose. It’s not that Derek’s a snob, it’s just that he’s always had money, and so there are some things that he doesn’t understand why people would go the cheap route on. Occasionally Stiles argues, but not when it comes to hotels. He has absolutely zero problem staying at a Marriot or a Hilton.

Well, that’s not true. He has one problem. It’s funny, but he finds that cheap hotels usually provide free wi-fi, whereas expensive hotels have the nerve to charge you for it. He even once stayed in a Marriot that blocked his hotspot, which pissed him off so royally that he wrote a scathing review on Yelp. This hotel doesn’t have the same problem, however, so he’s easily able to look up the name Arnelle in the metaphorical white pages.

There’s only one listing, but to be sure, he dials it on his cell phone. A child picks up, and he asks, “Is Lucy there?”

“She’s not here right now,” the voice says. “You wanna talk to my grandma?”

“No, thanks, I’ll just try back later,” Stiles says, and hangs up. “Okay, let’s get moving,” he says, and plugs the address into his phone’s GPS. It’s not far.

One problem with six people being on this trip is that they don’t easily fit in one car, so Stiles had requested that the rental agency gave him an SUV. He feels like a soccer mom, but he supposes there are worse things to be mistaken for. He parks a few doors down the street from the Arnelle house. “Wait, if she’s not here, why did we come here?” Scott asks.

“Well, I’m hoping they’ll know where she is,” Stiles says, “but if they don’t, we can wait for her here.”

“Oh, right,” Scott says.

“I don’t want to scare the living daylights out of her family, though,” Stiles adds, “and let’s not forget that this is a family that hunts werewolves, and we don’t know to what degree any of her younger siblings are trained. So, Allison, you’re with me. Derek, cover our backs. The rest of you stay in the car unless I call for you.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Erica says, although she sounds somewhat disgruntled.

As they approach the door, Stiles says, “Allison, I’m going to let you do the talking. I don’t want them getting weird about me being here. I don’t know if anyone even realizes that I was invited. So just introduce yourself, say you thought you would stop by and see Wednesday – Lucy – before the wedding. And maybe they’ll say something useful.”

Allison nods and rings the bell. It’s a nice little house, the kind that’s clearly old but maintained well, with a lot of love and elbow grease rather than money. The front walk is cracked in two places but filled in with asphalt, and the lawn is more crabgrass and wildflowers than any sort of typical grass. There’s a huge tree with an old-fashioned swing suspended from it, and a tricycle in the driveway.

Wednesday had never mentioned having any siblings at the Conclave, but then again, Stiles thinks, he had never asked. She wasn’t exactly the sort of person who shared a lot. He knew her parents had died four years before the Conclave, so the youngest sibling she could possibly have would now be about six years old. The thought of her having to cope with her parents’ death, her sudden ascension to the head of their family, along with watching a passel of younger siblings, hits him hard. He’s an only child himself, but there are several pack members with siblings, and he knows how fiercely protective of them they are, even when they aren’t getting along.

The door is opened by a girl of about thirteen, with strawberry blonde hair and a cute, upturned nose. She doesn’t open it all the way, though, leaving the chain on. “Hello?”

“Hey, my name is Allison Argent,” she says warmly, with that Disney princess smile that puts everyone at ease. “I’m in town for the wedding and I thought I would stop by to see Lucy. Is she home?”

“No,” the girl says, and frowns. “She doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Oh,” Allison says. “Can you tell me where she lives?”

“I’d better ask my gram,” the girl says, and gives them an expectant look. Stiles sees that she’s waiting to see if they try to talk her out of it or not, if they try to persuade her. She’s testing them, and he approves.

Allison evidently does as well, because she smiles and says, “Okay, we can wait.”

The girl nods and shuts the door. There are several long minutes of silence, but then she comes back. “Gram wants to see your invitation.”

“Sure,” Allison says, taking it out of her purse and handing it over. The girl turns around and trots off, but this time she leaves the door open a crack. Stiles suspects that she wants to know if they’re going to try to come in without permission or not. He has no doubt that someone with some sort of weapon will be waiting if they do.

Another minute passes, and then she comes back, still holding their invitation. She hands it back to Allison, and Stiles sees that there’s an address written on the back now. “Here,” she says, handing it back to them.

“Thanks, uh . . .” Stiles lets his voice trail off.

“Izzy,” the girl says.

“Thanks, Izzy. If we see your sister, should we tell her anything from you?” he asks, and he sees her give them the side-eye, judging their intentions. He feels like she’s pondering a lot of different options, but maybe that’s just him seeing shadows and conspiracy again.

“Ask her where we should send the presents,” Izzy says, and shuts the door in their face.

“That’s interesting,” Stiles says, as they walk back to the car.

“Which part?” Derek asks, catching up with them as they do.

“If they don’t know where to send the presents, it’s because they weren’t invited to the wedding,” Stiles says. “And Izzy didn’t want to admit that, not right off, at least not without checking with her grandmother, so she said that instead. But that’s interesting, isn’t it? Why wouldn’t the family be invited to the wedding?”

“Unless they don’t approve of it,” Allison says.

“Did they even know about it?” Erica asks.

“Yeah, they knew,” Stiles says. “She wasn’t surprised at all when we mentioned it, didn’t think it was weird that that’s why we were in town. But I don’t think she likes it very much.”

“So where are we going?” Scott asks from behind the wheel.

Stiles glances down at the address. It’s not even in Bowling Green, but a nearby town. He puts the address in his phone, and they start down the road. The shift of the landscape as they travel is interesting. Wednesday’s neighborhood was full of small houses, close together, with obvious evidence of families and children. It’s not a poor neighborhood, but probably lower middle class. Now they’re headed into the upper crust areas not far away, with larger lots, manicured lawns, fancy gates.

Fortunately, the gate at the house that they’re directed to is open, and Scott pulls inside. He hums for a minute and then sings, “I ain’t sayin’ she’s a gold digger . . .”

“Shut up!” Allison says, laughing.

Stiles has to agree to a certain extent. He thinks back to what Chris had said about hunters and their backers. Back at the Conclave, Jonas Aronsson had made a comment about the Arnelle family being broke. He was sure that Wednesday, young and inexperienced as she was, had struggled to keep her finances afloat. Was this why she had agreed to marry Martin Drake, Jr.? Was it all about money? He could hardly blame her if it was. He had watched Scott’s mother try to scrape up enough to keep their heads above water after Rafael had left them. He’d seen Boyd’s family work on their shoestring budget. Years of living off Derek’s immense wealth hadn’t changed the fact that he had seen what that was like. If money was what Wednesday needed, this would certainly be one way to get it.

And for that matter, he could see Wednesday doing that. One of the reasons he had liked her so much was because she was profoundly practical. She would pass by love and marry for money, if money was what she needed.

It’s all speculation, however, so he tells the others the same thing he had at the Arnelle house, and gets out of the car. This time, Derek decides to go in with them. He doesn’t like Stiles being on enemy territory alone. Wednesday was a friend; her house was safe. Drake is an unknown entity, and this house most likely belongs to him. Stiles has no interest in getting between Derek and his protective instincts, so he nods and agrees.

It isn’t quite nice enough for a butler, so they wind up standing on the doorstep for several long minutes. Then the door swings open and a young woman is standing there. She looks a little like Izzy, the girl at the Arnelle house, with the same long, strawberry blonde hair. Hers is done in two braids that neatly frame her freckled face. The freckles go down over her shoulders, for that matter, easily visible because she’s wearing a yellow and white sundress, which accentuates the slight curve of her belly.

“Wednesday?” Derek asks, his tone a little doubtful, and Stiles’ gaze snaps up to the girl’s face. She’s wearing pink lipstick and has pretty blue eyes and –

“Wednesday?” he echoes, and the eyeroll is what finally makes him sure. “Jesus, I didn’t even recognize you without your goth get-up.” He glances over at Allison and sees that her jaw is slightly ajar, so clearly she didn’t either. Derek probably was going off scent more than sight, as he’s wont to do. Stiles’ gaze goes down to her stomach again, and now he knows that his mouth is probably hanging open, too.

“What are you doing here?” Wednesday asks, and her tone is anything but friendly, so at least that hasn’t changed.

“I – I got your invitation,” Stiles says. “To the wedding.”

Wednesday frowns. “I didn’t invite you. What are you talking about?”

“Well, somebody did,” Stiles says.

“The wedding is on Saturday,” Wednesday says. “Come back then.”

She starts to close the door, but Stiles grabs it. He’s completely lost his ability to be smooth and tactful. “Wednesday, what the hell? Why are you suddenly getting married and only giving people a week’s notice? Why did you leave home? Why – why are you wearing a yellow dress? You’re the last person on earth I would have expected to see in a yellow dress – ”

“I can wear whatever I want,” Wednesday says. “I don’t have to justify my fashion choices to you.”

“Okay, that, that’s true,” Stiles says, “but, holy shit, are you pregnant? I guessed at this being a shotgun wedding, but holy shit – ”

“Stiles,” Derek says, with a wince.

“Yeah, sorry, but I just – ”

“Yes, I am pregnant,” Wednesday says. “Anything else? No? Then I’ll see you on Saturday at thr – ”

“Lucy!” a cheerful voice booms out behind her, and she glances over her shoulder. Derek’s nostrils flare slightly, but Stiles decides against saying anything about that until after they’re out of here. The man who comes to the door is wearing a wide smile, a polo shirt, and slacks. He’s got a watch that Stiles thinks probably cost more than everything he’s currently wearing or has ever worn. He also has a golfer’s tan and short dark hair with just a splash of gray at the temples. “Who are your friends, sugar?”

Wednesday’s expression doesn’t change, but she turns slightly to the side so she’s not in the doorway anymore. “Martin,” she says, and Stiles assumes (or at least hopes) that this is Martin senior. “This is Stanley Winchester. I met him at the Conclave a couple years ago.”

This ruse shouldn’t work, Stiles thinks. It wouldn’t work with virtually any hunter, but Drake wasn’t at the Conclave. They had excluded him, because nobody likes him. He can see how that would burn, and he wonders if Drake is holding a grudge, but for the moment it’s an advantage.

“Nice to meet you, sir,” Stiles says, extending his hand. Drake has a firm handshake and a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes. The lines don’t quite go away when the expression relaxes, so he clearly smiles a lot. “This is my boyfriend, Jack,” he adds, fumbling for a convenient excuse. “And, uh, this is Allison.”

“Argent,” she says, shaking his hand with a smile of her own.

“Oh, I’ve heard all about you,” he says. “Please, won’t you come in and have some lemonade?”

“We can’t,” Derek interjects smoothly, and Stiles isn’t thrilled about it, but he knows that Derek’s picked up on something he hasn’t, so he doesn’t argue. “We actually just got in and we need to go check into our hotel. We just thought we would stop by and say hello first.”

“You _are_ staying at the Biltmore, right?” Drake asks. “I’ve booked out rooms for the wedding. Just tell them you’re here for the Drake-Arnelle wedding, they’ll give you a great deal!”

“We’ll definitely look into that,” Stiles says. “Right now we’re at the Hyatt, but – ”

“Yeah, that place is okay, but the Biltmore is much classier,” Drake says. “Just tell them Martin sent you, they’ll get you taken care of!” He shakes their hands again. “Hey, it was great to meet you kids. Make sure you stop by again before the wedding, okay? We’ve got a lot to do but spending time with our friends and family is the most important thing! Lucy, the cakes are ready, you’re going to come help with the taste-testing, right? See you kids later!”

A bare moment later, the door is shut. Stiles says, “He strikes me as more of an auctioneer than a used car salesman,” and Allison gives a snort.

“I don’t like guys like that,” Derek says. “They talk a lot to distract you.”

“Yeah, I know the type,” Stiles says. “I am the type.”

At this, Derek laughs quietly and then reaches out to rub his hand over Stiles’ hair. They get back into the SUV and start driving.

“So why’d you think we needed to cut and run?” Stiles asks Derek.

“When he showed up – Wednesday was afraid. She hid it really well, but I could smell it. This sudden spike of adrenaline. And then she lied about who you were.” Derek shakes his head. “When he asked us to come in, that fear spiked again, and when I said we couldn’t, she relaxed. Your instincts were right, Stiles. Something is wrong here. Really wrong.”

“Well,” Allison says, “we’re just going to have to find out what.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing Ray Parr and Sketch Maguire! Who I like a lot. ^_^
> 
> Also, I attempted to research fashion for this chapter. Mostly what I found out is that fashion is really complicated. So I'm sorry if I got everything wrong.

 

“So do we head back to the Arnelle house?” Scott asks, flicking his turn signal as he leaves the Drake property.

“Not yet,” Stiles says. He thinks that they’re going to have to go there sooner rather than later, but there’s somebody else he wants to talk to, somebody that he thinks probably knows more about what’s going on than Wednesday’s younger siblings. From what he knows of her, he’s willing to bet that she kept them shielded from that as much as possible. “I want to go see Ray Parr.”

“Who’s that?” Erica asks, leaning over from the backseat.

“The alpha of this territory,” Stiles says. “You remember the story Wednesday told, about how her parents died? Ray is the then-beta who killed the alpha who killed them. From what I know, he and Wednesday had been working together to keep the territory safe, and he’s the one who introduced her to Calvin, the werewolf she was dating. So between the two of them, I hope that someone can tell us more about what’s been going on.”

“Do you know where we can find them?” Allison asks.

“Nope, but that’s why we brought Mac,” Stiles says cheerfully.

From the back, Mac’s eye roll is practically audible. “Oh, _that’s_ why,” she says, and everyone laughs. “Okay, seriously. What do you need?”

“Ray and I have e-mailed once or twice before, back when he first met Wednesday and she told him that I could vouch for her intentions when it came to dating one of the pack,” Stiles says. “Before we left, I e-mailed him to let him know I’d be making a stop on his territory, you know, get his permission so I wouldn’t step on any toes or tails. He e-mailed me back to say that was okay. So, if we can find out his IP address . . .”

Mac laces her fingers together and cracks her knuckles. “Get me to a place with wi-fi and give me fifteen minutes.”

They find a Starbucks on the outskirts of Bowling Green. Stiles takes the opportunity to load himself up with more caffeine, while Mac uses his laptop. It only takes her ten minutes to produce an address.

It turns out to be a large farmhouse about halfway between Bowling Green and Russellville, the next semi-large town to their west. Scott pulls the SUV up and proclaims that this time, they’re all going along. Stiles agrees. Ray’s not their enemy, but he can definitely see why the pack would be antsy about him knocking on another alpha’s door.

Ray answers mere moments after their knock, so he clearly heard them approach. He’s huge, taller than any of Stiles’ pack (the tallest of whom were still in California) and with broad shoulders and hugely muscled arms. He’s got dark skin and eyes, and like Deaton, keeps his head shaved. His eyes flare crimson when he sees them and gets a whiff of their scent. It’s not a threat, just a natural response, so Stiles gives him a polite smile and says, “Ray Parr, I presume.”

“That’s me,” Ray drawls. “You must be that punk alpha from California,” he adds, but he’s smiling a little, clearly just joking.

“Got it in one,” Stiles says.

“C’mon in,” Ray says. “Y’all hungry?”

“Nah, we ate before we came,” Stiles says, as they walk into an enormous living room. It’s clearly been tailored specifically for a pack, about twice the size of your average living room, with cushions and bean bags everywhere. There are several wolves lazing about, and about half a dozen humans of various ages. “I did bring these, though,” he adds, pulling a Tupperware full of cookies out of his bag.

“Are those your legendary gingersnaps?” a teenager with flaming red hair who’s practically covered in freckles jumps up off one of the cushions.

“I can’t believe the legend has spread this far,” Stiles says, laughing. Other pack members are getting up and wandering over. There’s no need to introduce himself, since they clearly heard Ray say who he was, but he adds, “This is my lupa, Derek, and this is Allison, Scott, Erica, and Mac.”

Ray gives a wave at his pack and lists off a bunch of names, ending by getting the redhead in a partial headlock and saying, “And this disaster on wheels is Sketch.”

“Sketch Maguire, at your service,” the young man says.

“Wednesday’s – uh, well, boyfriend last I checked,” Stiles says. “But I’ve gathered that things have changed.”

“You ain’t lyin,” the teenager says, shoving both hands in his pockets. But it doesn’t slow him down for long. He grabs one of the cookies and shoves it into his mouth. “Damn, son! These are good!”

“There had to be a reason everyone likes them, you know,” Ray says, rolling his eyes. Then he directs his attention back to Stiles. “That why y’all are in town? Because of the wedding?”

“Well, I’m in town because I got the invitation to the wedding,” Stiles says, “and I’m trying to decide whether this is an occasion I should be happy about or if I should’ve brought a shotgun or something. And since I got here, I’ve wound up with a lot more questions than answers. Now, I know it’s not my business,” he adds, “and I won’t make trouble here if you’d rather I didn’t. But Wednesday’s my friend and my guess is that something is wrong. I want to help if I can.”

Ray studies him for a long minute and then heaves a sigh. “Yeah, this way,” he says, and ushers them through the living room and into what looks like a home office. Sketch follows, and closes the door after them. Ray doesn’t bother to try to get rid of him.

“Wednesday probably doesn’t want to marry that Drake kid,” Ray says, “but the way things are here, I think she feels like she doesn’t have a choice.”

Stiles holds up a hand and says, “Start at the beginning.”

Ray considers for a minute. “Okay,” he says. “That probably takes us further back than you’d think. The problem is that the Arnelle territory has been shrinking for years. Had the Carolinas once upon a time but when the Argents split and moved south, Grandma Arnelle let Julien’s mom take them as part of her territory. They used to have Ohio, too, but when Drake took over that family up there, he took that. Betty and Curtis let him have it ‘cause they knew they had more land than they could handle. Money trouble, for one thing. But a lotta deaths. Betty’s mom died, and both of her sisters. Curtis’ sister came in to help and then she died, too. Curtis’ mom lives down here, and she’s sharp as a tack, but she’s got some sort of eye disease, been goin’ blind since she was in her thirties. They just – bad things happened here. That’s probably why Patterson figured it was ripe pickings.”

“Patterson?” Stiles asks. He’s taking notes.

“That sorry excuse for an alpha,” Ray says, baring his fangs for a brief moment. “He came in and killed Shosh, our alpha. Started killing off pack members. We’d been a big pack, about thirty members, and he whittled us down to about half that before Betty managed to smuggle me some silver nitrate. I killed him, but not before he killed them. Poor Lucy,” he adds. “Her life’s been a right mess.”

“She doesn’t act like it at all,” Scott says.

“She’s tough as hell,” Ray agrees. “Takes a hit and comes back swinging. But I guess there was only so much even she could take.”

He falls silent for a minute, and Stiles asks, “Ray, what happened here?”

“She didn’t want to give up the territory. Wanted to do right by her folks, you know? And she still had some friends. A few of her parents’ lieutenants are still around. But she needed help. At your advice, she came to us. Started datin’ Sketch, kind of wound up being adopted into the pack a little, though she never let us do it official like. She was a friend, and I know she cared about us even if she wouldn’t admit it.

“But things were getting worse. She was losing people, and damn, everyone she lost just hit right to her core. She couldn’t hold the lines. Henry Argent and Drake were both driving creatures off their lands and down here, and not all of ‘em were friendlies. She did her best, but hell, she’s nineteen. We helped as much as we could, but then . . .” A slight shudder goes through Ray. “We lost two pack members. And she took it hard. Said she never should have involved us. That from now on she’d take care of things herself, without involving civilians.”

“You guys are hardly civilians,” Erica says.

“Nah, but to her, we are. Because we ain’t hunters. We weren’t brought up to this. We lay our lives down for _her_ – because she asked us to. That’s why she pushed us away.”

Stiles nods a little. “What then?”

“Nothing,” Ray says. “That was four, maybe five months ago.”

“She didn’t stay in touch at all?” Stiles asks, then adds to Sketch, “Not even with you?”

“No, man, and I tried,” Sketch says, looking a little forlorn. “She’s nuts sometimes but I like her a lot, you know? I tried to get back in touch, showed up at her house, and she said I had to stop, that it wasn’t right to push a gal like that. So I backed off.”

“The only other time we heard from her was when she sent a letter – an actual letter – saying that some of Drake’s hunters were going to be on her territory, and giving us this passphrase we could use to let them know we were friends of hers, in case we got into any trouble with them,” Ray says. “And we have seen them a couple times, but they’ve never given us any shit. Maybe that’s as much as we can hope for.”

“Maybe,” Stiles says, but he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it at all, because it sounds more and more like Wednesday deliberately went to the Drakes for help, that she had agreed to this to try to keep her territory and protect her friends. He can’t tell her not to do that, and he can’t fix the problems she’s having, keeping her territory safe. Which means he might have to sit back and let this happen, because at the end of the day, it’s Wednesday’s decision to make.

But then again, there’s something else bothering him. Wednesday had denied inviting them. Was she just saying that in case Drake overheard? If she didn’t want their help, why would she send that invitation? Or if it was someone else, who? Presumably, Ray would have mentioned it if it had been them. And Wednesday’s family didn’t seem to like them being there, so it probably wasn’t them. Who, then? Had the invitation come from Drake himself? Was this some sort of trap?

Stiles can’t fathom why. Drake likes to take over people’s territories, but he’s got a lot of middle America to work through before he would get to California. And would he start doing something like that when he was clearly focusing on the Arnelle territory? It seems like a risky move to Stiles. But Drake seems slippery, and Stiles has been warned more than once not to underestimate him. Maybe he figures that getting rid of the famous Boy in Red would gain him some of the prestige and respect he wants, or the allies he needs. Maybe Sally Stoddard is involved with somehow. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

He has to talk to Wednesday. She’s the only one who’s going to be able to give him answers – and she’s clearly not going to do that until he can get her out of the Drake house and away from the Drakes. After a minute to consider, he says that out loud, and receives a round of nods.

“Okay, guys,” he says, once they’ve all agreed to that. “It’s getting late. Let’s pack it in for tonight and start fresh in the morning.”

“Let me give you my number,” Ray says, “so you can call me if you need anything while you’re here.”

“Cool, thanks,” Stiles says, and they quickly exchange numbers. He heads back out to the car, and the others follow. So does Sketch. Once they’re out of the house, he turns around to face the teenager. “What’s up?”

Sketch looks uncomfortable. “Look, man, I don’t want to be _that guy_ , you know? Lucy told me to back off, so I did. But when I think about her marrying someone else, I just want to rip the dude’s throat out. Okay, that’s my problem, not hers, not yours. But if something’s really wrong – if she’s been bewitched or blackmailed or whatever – will you tell me? I want to help.”

“Sure,” Stiles says.

“I know she ain’t no damsel in distress,” Sketch says, “and she’d kick my ass for even having this conversation. But I also know that she’s proud, and, and stubborn, and if she’s in over her head, she might not admit it to me. Or to you, for that matter.”

“Yeah, I know,” Stiles says. “And we sure as hell don’t have a lot of time, either,” he adds, “but I’ll see what I can do.”

“Okay. Just – ” Sketch rubs a hand through his hair. “I guess I love her, or whatever.”

Stiles has to bite back a smile. He doesn’t want Sketch to think he’s making fun of him. “Should I tell her that?”

“Fuck, no!” Sketch says. “No, I wanna tell her myself. If I can. So just keep me posted, okay?” he asks, and then jogs back into the house without waiting for an answer.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

The ironic thing is, to get to Wednesday without Drake, they have to go through Drake. After the first couple hours, it becomes clear that Wednesday has no intention of returning his calls or texts. Since she’s denying she invited them, that makes sense to Stiles. He’s still not sure whether or not Wednesday actually wants them there. But this is about more than Wednesday. It’s about Drake, about the hunting world in general. Stiles thinks back to what Chris had said, that the more powerful Drake got, the harder it would be to stop him.

Since Wednesday isn’t responding to him, Stiles makes the decision to leave the Hyatt and check into the Biltmore as recommended. Then he calls to thank Drake for the recommendation and tell him about how nice it is. Getting Drake’s phone number is surprisingly easy. He runs a number of businesses in the area, and it only takes Stiles about an hour to find an employee who will give him Drake’s number.

After a couple minutes praising the hotel, Stiles says, “Hey, is there anything we can do to help? I know most of the guests aren’t here yet. But you must have a lot left to do, since you put this together on such short notice.”

“Lucy insisted!” Drake says, in that jovial tone of his. “But hey, you know what, she hasn’t gotten her dress yet. I bet she’d love to have a few friends come along to help her pick it out. You gays love that sort of thing, right?”

Since now isn’t the time to be offended, Stiles just lets the comment pass and says, “That would be a lot of fun.”

“Why don’t you come on down to the house around one o’clock?” Drake asks, and Stiles agrees.

It would be nice to bring everyone, but Stiles suspects that the more people they bring, the more suspicious Drake will be. Even if he _wasn’t_ at the Conclave, it’s pretty well known that Allison Argent has a werewolf boyfriend, so they can’t bring Scott. However, Stiles agrees to let Scott, Erica, and Mac monitor his GPS and follow them to whatever part of town Drake brings them to, so they can be nearby if something happens. Scott promises to be circumspect. Mac promises to make sure Erica is circumspect.

“I could come along as your girlfriend,” Erica says.

“He already met Derek as my boyfriend,” Stiles reminds her.

Erica shrugs. “Polyamory. The way of the future.”

Amused, Stiles says, “Let’s not challenge someone who still thinks all ‘the gays’ love fashion with the notion of polyamory, okay? We’re trying not to attract attention here.”

Erica pouts but agrees, and a couple hours later, they’re again parked outside the Drake’s estate. For the first time, Allison brings up what Stiles had been thinking about the night before. “What if this really is what Wednesday wants?”

“Then we back off,” Stiles says. “But I’m still not sure. If she hadn’t been so afraid yesterday . . . Wednesday isn’t the type to scare easy. So why is she so afraid of Drake, or of what he might have figured out about us?” He gives a little shrug. “If we could just get her to talk to us, we can put it to rest, but she’s clearly not going to say anything while Drake’s around. So let’s take her dress shopping and go from there.”

As an idea, he thinks it’s A plus, but it loses something in practice, because Wednesday comes out of the house with Martin Drake Senior, and it quickly becomes clear that he intends to go with them. “Have to make sure everything is perfect!” he says, and Stiles sees a little bit of the old Wednesday in the look of unimpressed annoyance she shoots at him.

It takes them almost forty-five minutes to drive to a bridal shop that Drake has deemed suitable, although even Stiles has to admit that not just any store will do. They need something that has a large variety, and they’re not going to have time to get it altered. “I’ve made us an appointment,” he says, ushering the group inside like lost ducklings. Stiles hopes that Drake doesn’t notice the fact that Derek keeps moving away from him, before he can give him one of those friendly shoulder squeezes.

They’re greeted by a perky black woman who introduces herself as Charlee and asks, “What are y’all looking for?”

“A wedding dress,” Wednesday says flatly, and Stiles has to bite back a grin.

When Drake just gives her a nudge as if to encourage her, and the moment of silence is starting to become awkward, Derek sighs. “Well, it’s a winter wedding, so nothing strapless or sleeveless. With your figure, a V-neck or a sweetheart neckline will work best. Off-shoulder would be okay, too. Since you’re pregnant, we need something with an empire or natural waist, _maybe_ basque, definitely not drop.”

Allison and Stiles are both shooting him amused looks, while Drake guffaws and says, “I knew you’d know all about it!”

“And nothing too frilly,” Stiles chips in, because he might not know fashion, but he knows Wednesday. Or at least he thought he did.

“What size are you?” Charlee asks.

“I was an eight before, you know,” Wednesday says, gesturing to the curve of her belly.

“And your price range?” Charlee asks.

Drake waves this aside. “Sky’s the limit!”

“Let me bring you some choices!” Charlee says, before bustling off. She comes back with an armful of dresses a few minutes later. Wednesday takes the first one off the stack and disappears into the changing room without even looking at it.

“It zips up the back, hon,” Charlee says. She starts to push the curtain aside, but Wednesday blocks her.

“Allison, come give me a hand?” she asks, and Allison nods, going into the changing room. It’s immediately obvious why Wednesday didn’t want the shop’s assistant to help her. Like all hunters, she has a variety of scars.

Stiles is hoping that Wednesday wants to take the opportunity to talk to Allison alone, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t say a word until she’s out of the changing room, modeling the dress, a modest choice with lace sleeves. She holds her arms out and displays it wordlessly.

“Well, what do you think?” Drake asks.

“It’s okay,” Wednesday says.

“Next!” Stiles says, before Drake can point out that ‘it’s okay’ aren’t usually the words of an excited bride upon finding her perfect dress.

The second dress doesn’t fit, and the third Wednesday loathes so much that she won’t let anyone besides Allison see her in it. The fourth is as underwhelming as the first, so they move on to the fifth. “How does this one work?” Allison calls out. “There’s two skirts!”

“Oh!” Charlee says. “I’m sorry, I forgot to mention. The skirt has two layers – it hooks up underneath the body of the dress, do you see? They do that so you can take the outer layer off and wear a short skirt at your reception, if you like dancing. It’s really popular these days!”

“Oh, I see,” Allison says, and they’re silent for another minute. When Wednesday leaves the changing room, she’s wearing the long skirt, which comes down to her ankles. The waistline of the dress hides most of the curve of her stomach and flatters her small breasts, baring a large swath of her freckled chest before curving down into bell sleeves.

“This one,” she says.

“Are you sure, sugar?” Drake asks. “It’s awfully plain!”

“This one,” Wednesday repeats, and then she smiles for the first time since they had arrived. “This is the dress I want to marry Marty in.”

“Well, I can hardly argue with that!” Drake says. “Let’s get you some shoes to go with it!”

Wednesday’s smile has frozen on her face, but she lets Drake talk her into buying some heels and a jeweled tiara for her hair, although she puts her foot down at the idea of a veil and train. Drake doesn’t push the issue.

Before long, they’re loading the bags into Drake’s shiny SUV. He turns to Stiles, who’s carrying the bag with the shoes, and says, “How would you kids like to join us for dinner back at the house? Francisca’s got pulled pork in the slow cooker, and trust me, you haven’t had barbecue until you’ve had it from the south!”

“That sounds great,” Stiles says, “but I’m sure you’re really busy. We wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Not at all!” Drake says. “Lucy doesn’t see enough of her friends, isn’t that right, sugar? I’m sure she’d love to have you guys come over. Besides, we’ve got almost everything all set by now. Just got a couple last minute things to take care of. That seating chart is going to be a bear, let me tell you! But I guess we don’t get into this business to make friends, huh?”

“Some of us more than others, I think,” Stiles says.

“Well put!” Drake says, clapping him on the back so hard that he nearly falls over, and they head back to the house. It starts to rain while they’re on their way, and the air develops a chilly bite to it. It hasn’t exactly been balmy – winter in the south is still winter – but he’s glad that they’re headed inside for a while. At least it isn’t snowing, he thinks, as they navigate the rainy roads carefully.

Once back at the house, they finally meet Martin Drake, Junior, who Stiles was beginning to wonder if he really existed. It seemed odd for Wednesday to be marrying a figment of someone’s imagination, but he had seen much stranger things over the course of his life. But no, Marty Drake is there, in the flesh and larger than life. He’s a few inches taller than his father, about Stiles and Derek’s height, with the same dark hair but without the tan. He ignores the three newcomers and greets Wednesday with, “Hey, babe,” pulling her into a kiss that’s just one step short of inappropriate. Stiles waits for Wednesday to rip his tongue out and choke him with it, but she doesn’t. “Got a dress you like?”

“Yeah,” Wednesday says. She’s smiling, but it looks fake to Stiles, and her hands are hovering defensively, nervously, over her stomach.

“Get a push-up bra to go with it?” Marty asks, smirking at her.

Wednesday’s expression doesn’t change. “More than a handful’s wasted, Marty.”

“Marty, you’re being rude!” Drake says, but he doesn’t chide his son for insulting his fiancée. “This is Allison Argent, Stanley Winchester, and Jack . . . I didn’t catch your last name, son.”

Derek twitches, because he loathes people calling him ‘son’ if they aren’t Sheriff Stilinski, but he manages to keep it off his face. “Bauer,” he says.

Marty guffaws. “No shit, really?”

“Really,” Derek says. “And yes, I get that all the time. But to be fair, it was my name first.”

“Why don’t you show them around?” Drake says.

“Sure,” Marty says.

Still with that brittle smile, Wednesday says, “I think I’m going to go lie down for a little while before dinner. My back aches after trying on all those dresses.”

“Of course, sugar!” Drake says. “We’ll call you when the food’s ready.”

“If I’ve fallen asleep, please don’t wake me,” Wednesday says, and heads up the stairs without another word.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, friends, how about some exposition? =D
> 
> Mild warnings for Marty's rampant misogyny and for discussions of unwanted pregnancy, abortions, and babies in danger.

 

Marty Drake talks almost as much as his father does, and it’s just as annoying from the younger man. He brags about everything as he shows the trio around the house: how much it cost, how the tile was imported from Italy, how they have a four car garage so he has extra room for his Lamborghini. Stiles sees Derek’s eyes start to glaze over, as he’s clearly going to some inner happy place, and Allison looks like she’s itching to just stab Marty and have done with it.

“I’d take you out back if it wasn’t raining, there’s gardens and shit, but who cares, right?” Marty asks. He pushes through a set of double doors to show them a room with a pool table and an air hockey table and starts bragging about how good he is at both of these things. Stiles nods along with everything he says and wonders how Wednesday ever managed to spend more than five minutes in a room with him.

“What’s back here?” Allison asks, as they round a corner and go into a smaller, plainer room.

“Oh, servant’s kitchen,” Marty says. He sees her questioning look and says, “So this house is super old, right? Used to be a plantation or something. And back then the slaves weren’t allowed to eat with whitey, right? So they had their own kitchen, and that staircase back there – ” He points to a narrow staircase leading off the back of the room. “ – heads up to the servant’s quarters.”

“What do you use them for?” Stiles asks. Marty blinks at him. “Oh. Do you actually have servants?”

“Only a couple,” Marty says. “Francisca, that’s the cook, and Shelley is the housekeeper and then there’s a guy who does yardwork and maintenance on the cars and shit. He doesn’t live here, though. My dad uses the spare room for storage.”

“So do you guys live down here?” Allison says. “I thought you were based out of Maryland?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Marty says. “Dad usually lives up there. This place is mine, I moved down here when we started giving Lucy a hand with her territory so I could, you know, supervise. Okay, and also so I could tap that.”

Allison shoots Stiles a sideways look, and he doesn’t look back because he’s afraid of what he’d say. “How did you and Lucy meet, anyway? She hasn’t said much about it. I mean, she’s not super chatty.”

“Yeah, you know, she was having a hard time and Dad agreed to help her out, so he sent me down here with some guys. It was all work at first, but I wore her down.” Marty gives a satisfied smile. “That’s the thing with girls, you know, you gotta keep at ‘em. Can’t take no for an answer. Especially girls who think they’re better than you.”

Since Allison looks like she’s about to fly into a feminist rage, Stiles smoothly changes the subject. “So this place is all yours?”

“Yeah. Dad came down two weeks ago to help us prep for the wedding.”

“You don’t seem like the type that would want to be tied down,” Stiles says innocently, because if Marty is going to be a macho jerk, he can play into that.

Marty shrugs. “Hunter stuff, you know? I thought Dad was gonna have puppies when I told him that Lucy had succumbed to my charms. Hey, come on, I’ll show you my cars.”

Since Derek has a love of sports cars instilled in him by his mother, Stiles leaves the conversation to him for the next five minutes. And then the ten minutes after that. And the ten minutes after that. Marty _loves_ his cars, and since nobody currently wants to punch him in the face, Derek keeps talking with him about them. After a few minutes, Stiles excuses himself to use the bathroom. If Wednesday has gone upstairs to lie down, maybe he can talk with her in private.

Marty had given them a tour of the upstairs, so it only takes a minute and the process of elimination for Stiles to figure out which room is Wednesday’s. He opens the door and eases inside, looking around to see if she’s asleep. The room is nice, not the prison cell that he might have theorized. It’s a little less plush than some of the others, but he suspects that’s a matter of preference, not deprivation. The curtains and the bedspread are both plain, solid colors. There’s a distinct lack of the ornate decorations that he’s seen everywhere else.

There’s also a distinct lack of Wednesday Arnelle. Stiles stands in the doorway for a minute before he closes it behind him, thinking he might look for her phone or leave a note under her pillow or something. Then he hears a voice say, “Freeze.”

He half-turns on instinct, disobeying the instructions, to see Wednesday in the door on the wall to his left, which is obviously a bathroom. She’s got a towel wrapped around herself and is holding it with one hand. The other hand has a gun trained on him. Her hands are steady. The makeup is gone now, and her hair is wet and loose around her face.

Stiles lifts his hands in surrender and says, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“Really.” Wednesday looks unimpressed. “Has that phrase ever been true?”

Stiles thinks about it. “At least a few times?”

She sets the gun down, much to his relief, and clutches the towel with both hands. Stiles wonders if she has any idea how much she gives away with her body language. “You have to go,” she says. “If Martin finds you in here, he’ll be beyond pissed.”

“Is that guy ever pissed?” Stiles asks. “He seems like a pretty happy guy overall.”

Wednesday’s mouth tightens. “Yeah, you think because you spent a few hours with Martin you know all about him, huh? You think that friendly uncle routine, throwing money at things, inviting everyone over for dinner and bragging about his barbecue, you think that’s Martin Drake? Because let me tell you that – ” Her voice breaks off abruptly. “And, you’re baiting me,” she says, sagging down onto the bed.

“Maybe a little,” Stiles admits. Wednesday glares at him. “Okay. Cards on the table. I got an invitation to this wedding. And it doesn’t seem right to me. Tell me I’m wrong, and I’m in the wind. But you don’t seem happy to be here.”

“And what exactly are you going to do about it?” Wednesday asks acerbically.

Stiles shrugs. “I haven’t planned that far ahead.”

“Shocker,” Wednesday says.

Stiles gives it a minute. “Wednesday, why did you send me that invitation?”

Wednesday looks up at him, and Stiles can practically see the conflict etched into her face. The confusion, the stubborn pride, the exhaustion, the wish – God how he knows this wish – to just dump her problems in someone else’s lap and crawl underneath the covers until they go away. “I don’t know,” she finally says.

Stiles is about to sit down on the bed next to her and offer a hug if she wants one, but from downstairs, Drake’s voice rings through the halls. “Lucy? Dinner’s ready, sugar!”

“Shit!” Wednesday hisses. “Out, you son of a bitch, get out right now.” Her actions match her words, as she grabs him by the elbow, hauls him over to the door, and shoves him through it even though he was trying to leave under his own steam. He jogs down the hallway as quietly as he can, hearing Drake’s feet on the stairs, and ducks around the corner and down the servants’ staircase before he reaches the landing.

He rejoins the others in the garage and Marty looks irritated that he’s had to wait. He waves for the others to follow him back into the house and into the dining room. Martin comes in a minute later and says, “Lucy was asleep so I let her be. Poor thing must be exhausted,” he adds to the others. Stiles notices Derek arching his eyebrows in Judgment, but doesn’t say anything. “The last couple weeks have been a real whirlwind!”

Stiles waits until they’ve all been seated and gotten some food and he’s complimented the barbecue before he says, “So you said it was Lucy’s idea to have the wedding so quickly?”

“Sure was!” Drake says. “I think she’s a bit old-fashioned. Got it in her head that her grandma will be real upset if she finds out she’s pregnant and unmarried, you know?”

Stiles doesn’t know. That sounds like the last reason Wednesday would want a quickie wedding. She gives zero fucks about that sort of thing. But he’s not about to argue. “So how many people do you think are going to be able to make it?”

“Well,” Drake says, looking satisfied with himself, “I think most people are. We’re expecting about a hundred. It’s a pretty big deal, you know, the intermarrying between two hunter families. And everyone’s been so caught up with all the fighting – I think everyone could use some good news. Hey, there’s no hard feelings over Henry’s old territory, is there?” he asks, directing this towards Allison. “I know it’s Argent land by rights, but Henry and I had been working together a lot, and when I couldn’t reach him . . . I just had a bad feeling. Figured someone should step in sooner rather than later.”

“No, it’s fine,” Allison says, with her princess smile. “You know, Sam was talking about taking over, but he’s only barely gotten out of college. Julien is going to let him have Mississippi and Alabama for his own.”

“Good, good,” Drake says, nodding. “I didn’t want to step on toes, but that’s what you’ve gotta do sometimes, am I right?”

“You guys have a pretty big territory now, don’t you?” Stiles asks.

“Eh, just middling,” Drake says. “About two hundred seventy square miles. Lot of families with just that much or more. But once we merge with Arnelle’s territory, we’ll have more than anyone else except the Winchesters!”

“So . . . she’s not keeping her own territory?” Allison asks, while Stiles finds it interesting that Drake knows those figures off the top of his head.

“It’s not like we’re making her move out,” Marty says, rolling his eyes. “I mean, you Argents might have your thing for women in charge, but not everyone has to do it your way.”

Allison opens her mouth.

Drake speaks before she can. “Not that Lucy isn’t capable! She absolutely is! But now that she’s pregnant, you know, I’m sure she’s going to want to focus on that, stay at home and make some babies.”

Allison’s mouth stays open. 

“You know what I was thinking?” Stiles asks, changing the subject again. “We should take Lucy out for a little bachelorette party! I mean, I know she can’t drink, but we could go back to the hotel and, and,” he digs in his brain for something appropriate, “do makeovers and gossip about boys.”

Derek and Allison both give Stiles an ‘oh really?’ sort of look, but Drake just laughs again. “That’s a great idea, Stan! Lucy’s so serious all the time, she could use a night out on the town. You should take her down to JJ’s, they’ve got the best wings in town!” He starts to talk about different local hotspots, and the others let him talk. He knows a surprising amount about the locals, given that he doesn’t live there, but Stiles thinks he’s the sort of person who just wants to make friends, build networks and connections, wherever he goes.

The meal drags on far too long, and Stiles finally manages to make their escape. They meet up with the others back at the hotel; they had gone to get dinner on their own.

“A night out on the town, huh?” Erica asks, smiling wickedly. “Good thing I brought my little black dress.”

“Now, now, it’s Wednesday’s bachelorette party,” Stiles says, “which means we’ll do whatever she wants to do. Whether that’s go to a bar for wings, do makeovers at a hotel, or hopefully tell us what the fuck is going on.”

“As long as it’s not drinking,” Derek says.

Allison rolls her eyes. “Any baby that’s half Marty Drake’s genes is doomed already no matter what Wednesday does.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Stiles says. “He’s not dumb. Neither of them are. I think these personas they use are very carefully calculated. But that’s something to worry about on another day. Let’s go skype with the others and update them, and see if they have any ideas.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Wednesday looks just as dour and annoyed when they arrive the next day as she had the first day Stiles had met her. The fact that she’s wearing a cute black skirt and sparkly pink top along with little black boots only makes the expression look weirder. She scowls at Stiles as he cheerfully greets Martin Drake, who claps him on the shoulder and tells them to have a good time.

“Have her in by midnight or she’ll turn into a pumpkin!” Drake says in that jocular tone. Stiles laughs and agrees.

Everyone is crammed into the SUV, which is no easy feat and most likely violates several traffic laws. Stiles lets Wednesday have the front seat, of course, with the others in the back. “So,” he says brightly, “where do you want to go?”

“We’re going to JJ’s, right?” Wednesday asks.

“Well, it’s your bachelorette party,” Stiles says. “We could go anywhere you wanted . . .”

Wednesday looks straight ahead and doesn’t take the bait. “JJ’s is fine.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. Drake had already given him the address, and he has it in his GPS, so he starts down the road. He drives for a couple minutes in silence before he says, “Okay, look, Wednesday – ”

She interrupts him. “Can we stop at that Burger King up there? I have to use the bathroom.”

“We just left,” Stiles says, startled out of tact.

Wednesday shrugs. “I have a fetus stepping on my bladder. Is that okay with you?”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Stiles says. He pulls into the Burger King parking lot. “You know what, I’ll run in too,” he says, thinking maybe he’ll have a chance to talk to her, since she doesn’t seem to want to do it in front of everyone else. He follows her into the restaurant and down the narrow corridor to the restrooms. He’s about to say something when she suddenly takes him by the elbow and yanks him into the women’s room. She slams him up against the door, one hand gripping his shoulder like a vise.

“Listen to me, you stupid little fuck,” she snaps. “I know that you think you’re God’s gift to mankind and I know you think you’re some sort of genius, so let me lay out a few things for you real quick, okay? Drake knows exactly who you are. He’s known who you were since the second you showed up.”

Stiles opens his mouth. “How do you – ”

Wednesday pulls him back and then slams him back against the door. “Shut up! You wanted me to talk and now I’m talking. Drake knows who you are and he thinks you’re fucking adorable. He thinks you think he’s an idiot, and that’s exactly how he wants it. You _do not understand_ Martin Drake. He’s bugged your car. He’s bugged your hotel room. You moved to the Biltmore to make friends with him without thinking about the fact that everyone there fucking works for him and has reported back on everything you’ve done there. Oh, and let’s talk about how he’s really enjoying playing along with your little gay charade and saying things like ‘you gays love fashion’ just because he knows it’ll bug you but you won’t dare say anything back.

“We’re expected at JJ’s and if we don’t go there, there will be trouble. There is _nowhere_ in this one-horse Podunk town that he does not have spies. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go to JJ’s. We’re going to have some drinks and some wings. We’re going to talk and laugh and look like we’re having a good time. Sometimes there’s live music and there’s usually a crowd. So _if_ I judge that it’s safe, I will tell you what’s going on. And if I judge that it isn’t safe, you will keep quiet and do exactly what I say, because you are on _my_ territory, and this is _my_ life and _my_ family that is in danger if this wedding falls apart. Is all that fucking clear?”

“Yes, ma’m,” Stiles says meekly.

“Good.” Wednesday lets him go. “Now get out of here. I still have to piss.”

Stiles raises his hands in surrender, feeling like a moron. But he asks, “Wednesday, why did you send me that invitation?”

“I’m beginning to really fucking wonder,” she says, and shoves him out of the ladies’ room before he can say anything else.

Stiles takes out his phone and sends a group text to the others that are waiting in the car. ‘apparently our car is bugged and we shouldn’t talk about the wedding’ and then ‘follow my lead’. There’s a variety of responses of ‘ok’ and ‘wtf’ before he heads back outside. He’s not even one hundred percent sure Wednesday will come back, but she does, and gets into the car looking composed.

“Sorry about that,” she says.

“So is it a boy or a girl?” Allison asks, trying to sound cheerful and excited about the pregnancy.

Wednesday’s hands curl over her stomach. “Girl,” she says.

“Well, I hope JJ’s makes a good virgin piña colada!” Stiles says.

Mac bursts into song. “If you like piña coladas!”

“And gettin’ caught in the rain!” Erica and Allison sing along with her.

“That song is about a married couple planning to cheat on each other, who happen to reply to each other’s personal ads, and somehow that makes it all okay that they were both planning to cheat,” Derek states.

“Wow, thanks, Reverend Buzzkill,” Scott says.

Stiles rolls his eyes, but he lets the conversation go along without him, thinking about everything they’ve said or done in the hotel room since arriving. It’s true that there’s no way Drake _wouldn’t_ know who they were, if he has indeed bugged their hotel, car, or both. But fortunately, he doesn’t think he’s talked much about other hunter business. Although they’ve talked repeatedly about why they can’t imagine why Wednesday would want to marry Marty, they haven’t talked a lot about _why_. They didn’t need to. So they haven’t talked about Sketch or his pack, haven’t talked about the deaths that had bothered Wednesday so much. It’s bad, that’s for sure, but it could be a lot worse. He tries to remember if they had talked about Wednesday sending him an invitation. He’s pretty sure Wednesday didn’t want Drake to know that. But if he had, he can’t remember.

They get to the bar and Derek offers Wednesday a hand out of the car, which she accepts with a slight smile, and they go inside. It’s a loud place, as she had said, although there’s no live music yet. It looks like a typical crowd, with a lot of denim and a lot of beer. One of the waitresses greets Wednesday and tells her that she saved their biggest table.

It’s a round table, near the back, and Stiles plops into a seat and greets the waitress cheerfully. He’s aware of Wednesday’s gaze on him, and he’s also aware that what he needs to do right now is prove that he can play ball. He’s screwed up, pretty badly, and he needs to regain her trust. So when the waitress asks what they want, they order a round of sodas, two orders of wings, and a few other appetizers. Derek and Allison are the only ones old enough to drink. Stiles’ twenty-first birthday is only about two months away, but everyone else has a ways to go.

Stiles launches into a funny story about one of his college classes, and everyone listens with interest and laughs even though it’s obvious that the rest of the pack is wondering what the hell the game plan is. But they join in, with Allison telling a hunting story and Scott telling a story about a demon cat who needed vaccinations. Even Derek manages to muster up a tale about an annoying customer at his gallery.

Music starts as they finish demolishing their chicken wings and mozzarella sticks, and people get up to dance. It’s a little too formal for Stiles, since it looks like a square dance, which is something he has absolutely no idea how to do. But he asks Wednesday if she wants to dance, thinking that might be a safe place to talk. “Ugh, no,” she says, and Allison laughs. She and Scott get up to dance, Mac drags Derek out to the dance floor, and Erica is already halfway to second base with an attractive stranger, so everyone’s having a relatively good time.

They order more wings and Wednesday excuses herself to go to the bathroom again. Stiles gives her a questioning look and she gives an almost nonexistent shake of her head, so he stays at the table. When she comes back, she looks a little less annoyed at him, presumably for following her instructions. Then she looks across the bar and says, “You want to shoot some pool?”

“Sure,” Stiles says, getting to his feet. He follows her across the bar, thinking that pool must be difficult for her, given her pregnancy. But she breaks like a pro and lines up her next shot.

“Yes, I’m marrying Marty voluntarily,” she says, not even looking at Stiles, but keeping her gaze trained on the table. “I’m not brainwashed or blackmailed. They’re not holding my family hostage or anything like that. It was my idea to go to them for help, and this was their price.”

Stiles polishes the tip of his cue with the chalk even though he’s terrible at pool and remarks quietly, “You don’t seem happy about it.”

“It’s not . . . it got away from me.” Wednesday lets out a quiet breath. But she’s still smiling as she moves around the table, as if she’s talking about something cheerful. “I went to them for help in an auxiliary capacity. Everything was still supposed to be run by my lieutenants. I was going to be the one in charge. And Drake said sure, no problem. This was before he took over Henry Argent’s territory. He’s been sniffing around down here for years. I thought . . . I thought I could stay ahead of him. Keep stringing him along, make him believe that I would let him have what he wanted, until I could stabilize things down here. Once I had it locked down, I could maintain control. I just needed a little extra juice to make that push.”

She takes another shot and misses. Stiles moves around the table to take his first turn. “But?” he asks.

“But you can’t stay ahead of Martin Drake,” she says. “I tried to use him. He knew it, and he let me believe I was winning. And then he went behind my back. Talked to my backers, my lieutenants. Told them that I was planning to sell out to him. He got them all on his side. So when I tried to shake him off, I couldn’t. They told me they knew that the only reason I was getting things under control was because of him. They switched to what they thought was the winning side.”

Stiles lets out a breath. “Six-ball in the corner pocket,” he says, loud enough for a few people to overhear, and then misses the shot by several inches.

Wednesday rolls her eyes at him. “I thought, fine. I could just . . . I would handle it, somehow. I would let him romance my backers while I looked around for more. I still had friends of my parents’ that I could go to. And after Drake stole Henry’s land, I was talking with Julien Argent about maybe getting some help from him, before Drake could keep expanding. But then . . .” She swallows hard, takes her shot, and misses.

“Then?” Stiles says, lining up his next shot.

“I found out I was pregnant.” Wednesday’s hand clutches at her stomach. “That . . . that changed everything.”

“Drake insisted that you keep it?” Stiles asks, feeling another surge of sympathy. Obviously, Drake would never let Wednesday get an abortion, not if she was carrying his grandchild, and in rural Kentucky, Wednesday probably didn’t have a lot of resources.

Wednesday looks at him blankly for a minute. “What?” she asks.

Another piece clicks into place. “It’s _not Marty’s_?”

“Shut up!” Wednesday hisses. “Take a fucking shot, you asshole.”

“Right, uh, four ball in the side pocket,” Stiles says, and manages to concentrate long enough to sink it. Since Wednesday seems to be taking a minute to gather herself, Stiles says, “Is it Sketch’s?”

Wednesday swallows hard and she looks away, the fake smile dropping off her face. “We were still, you know, seeing each other for a while, even after I was dating Marty. I knew it was stupid, but Sketch . . . he means something to me. He cares about me. He does dumb shit like bring me flowers and he calls me Lucy-Loo like it’s some fucking joke and I . . .” She chews on her lower lip, gnawing at it. “But if Drake found out, I knew that he’d flip his shit. He’d turn everyone against me and I, I’d be out. Getting pregnant by a _werewolf_ , I mean . . .” She watches Stiles miss his next shot and huffs out a breath. “Thirteen in the corner pocket,” she says, moving around the table. “Fucking Kentucky sex ed. Nobody ever told me that taking antibiotics makes your birth control ineffective. One infected werecat bite and suddenly I’ve got a bun in the fucking oven. Anyway, as soon as I found out, I started having sex with Marty. Then a month later, I told him I was pregnant. That was three months ago.”

“Wednesday . . .” Stiles pushes a hand through his hair. “Look, I get that this hasn’t been easy, but I think you haven’t thought this one through. I mean, do you think he won’t notice when the baby is like . . . two months early but perfectly healthy? Not to even mention that it’s got, like, a twenty percent chance of being a werewolf, and from what I’ve seen, a ninety-nine percent chance of being a freckled redhead.”

“Of course he’ll notice,” Wednesday hisses, but then pastes that smile back on her face. “That’s why I had to push for a quickie wedding. I knew he’d make a big deal out of it, announce it to everybody. Once we’re married, if I have a baby that isn’t Marty’s, it’d be a huge embarrassment for him if people found out. They wouldn’t be able to turn people against me, at least not for that reason.”

“I guess not,” Stiles says, although he personally still has doubts.

“Listen to me, Stiles, you don’t – ” Wednesday chokes a little and draws away from the table, gripping at her cue with white knuckles. “Everything I have done in the past six months, _everything_ , has been for this baby. I will not let _anyone_ hurt this baby. Do you understand me?”

Stiles nods. “I understand.”

Wednesday has to take several deep breaths before she goes to take her next shot. Stiles watches her quietly for a few minutes.

“Does Sketch know?” he asks.

“No,” she says, and then adds, “I want to tell him. I do. It’s his baby, too. But I can’t. He’ll do something stupid and get himself killed, and I can’t . . . I can’t let that happen. I’ll tell him as soon as I can, but I can’t. Not yet.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. He’s not sure if that’s a great decision, but it’s _her_ decision, and he won’t try to argue with her about it. He thinks for a long minute while Wednesday leans against the pool table, ostensibly scoping out her next shot, but really just looking tired. “Okay,” he says again. “I want to tell you something really important. I know that you hate asking for help. I know that because I hate it, too. You feel like you failed, like you’re weak.”

“Thanks for pointing that out,” Wednesday grates out, her fingers curling around the pool cue.

“Look, I feel you,” Stiles says. “I do. Because there have been times in my life, a lot of them, when I felt like I should have been able to handle things and I couldn’t. And I had to get a lot of therapy before I got to the point where I was okay with asking for help. Because it _doesn’t_ make you weak, Wednesday. Having a support network, having allies, it only makes you stronger. You don’t have to do everything yourself. Trust me on that. I learned it the hard way.”

Wednesday lets out a slow breath. “Thanks,” she says.

They play in silence for several minutes. “Wednesday,” he finally says, “why did you send me that invitation?”

“Because . . . because I don’t want to marry Marty,” she says. “I just can’t find a way out of it. But this isn’t my God damned wheelhouse. Give me something to shoot or fight and I can do it, but this sort of long-term strategy and deception, apparently I fucking suck at it. And you have a way of, of thinking around corners. Of seeing solutions that other people don’t see. And because . . .” She takes another deep breath, looks up, and meets his gaze. “Because you’re better than anyone else I know when it comes to destroying people. I don’t want Drake defeated or beaten or even killed. I want him _destroyed_. So I called you.”

Stiles nods slowly. “Okay,” he says. Now he knows what he’s here for. And this, this is something he can handle.

Wednesdays puts down her pool cue. “I have to go to the bathroom again,” she says, but for the first time, there’s a genuine smile on her face, even though it’s faint. Her hands curl around her stomach again. “Stupid girl doesn’t know how to give me a break.”

“Well, she’s an Arnelle,” Stiles says. “Far as I can tell, they’re pretty stubborn. Maybe a little headstrong. But tough as hell.”

“She is that,” Wednesday says, before walking away.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	5. Chapter 5

 

They drop Wednesday back at the Drake house at about ten thirty. She departs with no more than a quick goodbye. Derek shoots Stiles a questioning look, and he shakes his head and puts the car in drive. Then he says, “Jesus, I give up. If she really wants to marry that douchebag, she’s on her own.”

“She wouldn’t tell you what’s going on?” Erica asks.

“Not a fucking word,” Stiles says. “Well, okay, lots of words. Some four-letter words. About minding my own business and letting her handle things herself.” Since he doesn’t want Drake knowing Wednesday had invited them if at all possible, he adds, “She’s pissed at you, too, Allison, because of course if you hadn’t showed me the invitation you guys got, she wouldn’t have this problem.”

With that, everyone in the car who wasn’t already aware figures out that he’s just making shit up for Drake to overhear. Mac says, “So are we gonna leave or what?”

“Well, I don’t want Allison here without backup, so we’ll stick around until her Dad gets here on Friday night, I guess,” Stiles says. “Ugh, I’m beat. Let’s head back to the hotel and watch some TV until my head falls off.”

“Maybe we can find a decent movie,” Scott says.

Since driving in silence is awkward, Stiles strikes up a conversation about recent movies, which gets them back to the hotel. They troop back inside and lock the door. Stiles holds one finger up in the universal signal for ‘wait’ and then says, “Let’s see what’s on.” He turns the TV on and flips channels for a few minutes, ending up on the sci-fi channel, which is showing X-Files reruns. “Sweet,” he says, leaving it on and going over to his laptop. Everyone is watching him. He sits down, pulls up a blank Word document, and begins to type.

‘So, our hotel room is probably bugged too,’ he types, and hears Derek suck in a breath. ‘Give me a few minutes and I’ll type out the details of what Wednesday told me tonight, and then you can ask questions. Until then, interact with the TV show.’

The others nod and redirect their attention back towards the television. Stiles begins to type a thorough accounting of what Wednesday had told him, admitting that he had fucked up and it was going to be difficult to dig their way out of the hole he had put them in.

The only thing he leaves out is the fact that the baby isn’t Marty Drake’s. It does put some of Wednesday’s actions in perspective, but he’s afraid that they’ll want to tell Sketch. Scott in particular has issues with absent fathers, and although Stiles trusts that he would want to respect Wednesday’s decision, that doesn’t mean he won’t blurt something out by accident. For now, it’s just better if they don’t know.

When he finally finishes typing, the others come over to read it. It takes several minutes and there’s a lot of grimacing. There’s a few minutes of typing and jostling for the computer as they ask some questions to clarify or suggest ideas. Allison wants to know if they should have her father come sooner, and Derek wants to know how much money, exactly, Wednesday might need from a backer. Stiles says no to the former and has no idea about the latter. Then Scott asks ‘why don’t we let Drake hear us plan to leave and then we can get another hotel room’ and Stiles reminds him that Drake has spies throughout town.

‘So what now?’ Erica finally asks.

‘Now, nothing,’ Stiles types. ‘It’s late, we’re tired. We’ll get some sleep and start fresh in the morning, in a place where we won’t have to type everything.’

Besides, there’s someone else he can talk to without making any noise, and he wants to get Peter’s opinion on what’s going on. It seems like Peter is a lot like Martin Drake in some ways, and he might have an idea of how to go about this. So Stiles takes a hot shower and then lies down. Their room only has two beds. Scott and Allison have claimed one to use in their human forms; Stiles is sharing the other with three wolves. The others are settling down, the television has been turned off.

It’s winter in the birch grove, corresponding with the outside, but that doesn’t seem to bother Peter. He’s sitting in his usual V-neck T-shirt and slacks and bare feet underneath the bare trees. There’s snow on the ground. Stiles sits down across from him, brushing aside some snow. “So,” Peter says, “tell me what you’ve discovered.”

“I’ve discovered that I’m a moron, for one,” Stiles says, and gives Peter the lowdown on Martin Drake.

Peter surprises him by saying, “You’re being hard on yourself, you know. Wednesday introduced you to Drake as Stanley Winchester. You assumed, not unreasonably, that she wouldn’t have bothered with that ruse if she hadn’t thought it would work. So your presumption that Drake didn’t know who you were was supported by your high opinion of Wednesday’s intelligence. You should tell her that, next time you see her.”

Stiles gives a snort. “Okay, but then why _did_ she introduce me that way?”

“Well, I assume because she didn’t want you murdered on the spot, and figured it might confuse him long enough for her to get rid of you and then explain the situation.” Peter gives a shrug and then says, “Go on.”

Stiles continues to tell the story, explaining what Ray had said about the Arnelle territory and the deals Wednesday had tried to make and how it had backfired on her. Peter sits with his eyes closed, expressionless until Stiles mentions Wednesday’s pregnancy. Then he frowns slightly, as if it’s a complication he doesn’t like.

“And that’s it,” Stiles finishes. “We can’t talk in our hotel room, or our car, and I’m not sure if ‘finding’ one of the listening devices and swearing about it loudly would get Wednesday in trouble or not.”

“I wouldn’t,” Peter says, “for two reasons. Firstly, you may have made a few mistakes, but the upside is that you’ve convinced Drake that you’re a fool. And him thinking that you’re a fool when you are not is a distinct advantage. Secondly, you have an unparalleled opportunity to feed him some false information. He doesn’t know you know about the bugs – indeed, with the way you’ve been freely discussing things he has every reason to think you don’t – so you can easily lead him astray if you continue to ‘freely discuss’.”

“Good point,” Stiles says. He pushes both hands through his hair and says, “I don’t know, though. I don’t know what we can do here. Even if we can destroy Drake, it won’t solve Wednesday’s larger problems.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Peter says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Drake was responsible for most if not all of her problems.”

“You think Drake is siccing werewolves on her?” Stiles asks.

“I think Drake is determined to expand his territory at any cost, and yes, paying off some werewolves to attack her land is something that would be quite easy for him to do. This would be the third territory Drake’s taken over. This isn’t something that’s happening by accident.”

Stiles thinks about it for a minute. “I barely know anything about how the Stojanovic family died,” he says. “But we know he wasn’t involved in Henry Argent’s death.”

“You actually do not know that,” Peter says. “You were told by Sally that she had killed them. That might or might not be true, for one thing, but just because she killed them doesn’t mean that Drake wasn’t involved. Maybe he and Sally worked together. Maybe he knew she was going to do it, maybe he helped her. Either way, you can’t argue that he was certainly poised to sweep in and take over, and that kind of preparation isn’t something that could be done overnight.”

“Do you think Drake killed the Stojanovics?” Stiles asks.

“Most likely, and my guess is that he arranged for the death of the Arnelles as well,” Peter says. “From what Ray said, Patterson was already an alpha when he got here. A beta might go in search of an alpha to kill and a pack to take over, but alphas don’t do that. They stay on their territory. Unless he had some specific beef with this pack – which there’s no evidence that he did – what the hell did he come here for? No, he was sent here to kill the Arnelles. And then there’s the question of where the alpha pack was during all this. What year did it happen?”

Stiles casts his mind back. “That was when Wednesday was thirteen, so six years ago.”

“So, during Kali’s tenure as their leader. Which makes it very possible that she was paid off or bribed not to deal with Patterson. We know she wasn’t averse to working with hunters if it got her things she wanted.”

Stiles grimaces. “I guess it’s possible.”

“My only point is that bad things happen to territories that Drake wants,” Peter says. “And that the pattern would imply that if he’s not directly responsible, he’s certainly at least _partially_ responsible.”

“Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is conspiracy,” Stiles says, nodding. “I need information,” he says. “About the Stojanovics, the Arnelles, all the stuff that’s been happening on this territory. Because it won’t be enough to kill Drake. Everyone will suspect Wednesday was behind it; she could be ostracized the way the Gutierrezes were, and she could lose everything. We need to disgrace him in front of everyone. And we’re going to have exactly one chance to do that . . . and only a little more than seventy-two hours to get everything ready.”

“Well, then,” Peter says, “you’d better get some sleep.”

“In a minute,” Stiles says. “First I need to send some e-mail.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Most of the next morning is done in grumbly silence as people go in and out of the shower and watch the weather. “S’posed to be a nice day,” Stiles says, yawning as he gets dressed. “Tell you what, since Wednesday doesn’t want our help, you guys want to get out of here for a bit? There’s supposed to be some great drives and hiking trails up in the Smoky Mountains.”

“Oh, hey, can we go to Mammoth Cave?” Mac asks, excited. “That’s right near here and it’s one of the country’s biggest cave systems. That would be awesome.”

“Sure,” Stiles says.

“How far are we from St. Louis?” Scott asks. “I’ve always wanted to see the Arch.”

“It’s not that great,” Derek says, and Stiles lets out a snort.

“Let me check real quick,” he says, tapping at his phone. “About a four hour drive, we could do it tomorrow if you really wanted,” he continues. “I mean, we’re here, we might as well make the most of it. Let’s go get some breakfast and we can head out for the day.”

Everyone agrees to that, and a few minutes later they’re headed to the diner a few doors down from the hotel. Stiles continues to poke at his phone to find nearby attractions and even asks the waitress if she can give them directions to Mammoth Cave Park, thinking that someone there might report back to Drake. He also spends some time texting, to get a few things taken care of.

Within an hour, they’re on the road. Mammoth Cave Park is surprisingly close, and they’re parked there a half hour later. Once they’re all out of the car, Mac says uncertainly, “So . . . are we actually doing the cave tour?”

“Maybe later,” Stiles says, and points. Ray Parr is sitting a few spaces down in an old-fashioned pickup truck. “We’re meeting our wheel man here.”

Ray waves as they approach. “Y’all’ll have to ride in the back,” he says. “Sorry, this the only car I got. People do it out here all the time, though, nobody’ll care.”

Everyone piles in. Stiles and Allison, being the fragile, squishy humans, ride in the cab. They leave their bugged SUV in the parking lot and head back to Ray’s house.

“So, y’all gonna tell me what’s going on?” Ray asks.

“Well, you were right about most of it,” Stiles says. “Wednesday went to Drake to try to shore up her borders. He went behind her back and told all her backers and lieutenants that she couldn’t handle things herself, so when she tried to ditch him, they wouldn’t let her. Long story short, they strong-armed her into the wedding. She’d love to get out of it but doesn’t know how to do it without losing her territory.”

Ray purses his lips. “She can’t even just yield, huh, ‘cause Drake would probably kill us all,” he says.

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “Now, I have a theory that Wednesday’s problems all relate back to Drake if we can look hard enough. I think he’s been softening up this territory for years, in preparation for this. And what we need to do is prove it.”

“Bet that’s gonna be harder than it sounds,” Ray says.

“You’re not wrong,” Stiles says, “but at least I’ve got a place to start.”

When they arrive at Ray’s house, he’s cleared out most of the rest of the pack. Sketch is there, though, pacing around anxiously. “Have you seen her, is she okay?” he asks, as they get out of the truck.

“Yeah, she’s okay,” Stiles says. “The good news is, she doesn’t want to marry Marty Drake. The bad news is, she doesn’t want to marry Marty Drake. So, since the wedding is at three PM on Saturday, and it is now,” he checks his watch, “eleven AM on Wednesday, we have seventy-six hours to figure out how to stop it. But since Drake has a chokehold on Wednesday’s backers, and to a lesser degree her lieutenants, it won’t be enough to quietly assassinate him. We’re going to have to expose him for who he is, and we can only do that at the wedding.”

Derek nods. “Where do we start?”

“Information,” Stiles says. “Ray, you have wi-fi here?”

“Cable yes, wi-fi no,” Ray says. “You can use my computer, or unplug it and plug in your own.”

“I’ll use my hotspot.” Stiles starts to set up on the large table in the kitchen. “So, I sent out some e-mails last night. Dad is going to get me everything official from the murder cases of the Stojanovics and the Arnelles. Veronica is going to get me everything _unofficial_ from those murders. And Chris and Jake are going to send me all the CompStats for this region and the surrounding regions.”

“The whats?” Erica asks.

“Oh, sorry – crime statistics, basically,” Stiles says. “It’s a system that was originally developed by the NYPD and has spread to a lot of different police departments. That’s probably not at all what the hunters call their statistics, but it’s the lingo I’m used to. Allison, you have your laptop, too?” he asks, and she nods. “Mac?”

“Never travel without it,” Mac says.

“Okay. We’re going to split into three teams,” Stiles says. “Scott, Allison, you’re on the Stojanovics. Erica, Mac, Derek, you take the Arnelles. I’ll run through the statistics with some help from Ray and Sketch, since they’ll have the local knowledge I need. Everyone good?”

“Good,” everyone says, and Allison and Mac start setting up their laptops.

It takes Stiles the better part of two hours to compile all the necessary statistics. Jake has sent him a very thorough report. Apparently, there’s a group of hunters that are responsible for keeping track of all of this, called the Archive. Jake is quite enthusiastic about this in his e-mail; it’s the sort of work that he enjoys. He sends Stiles the last twenty years of data from every territory in the east.

Stiles puts it all together with graphs and then sends it to Lydia to run a statistical analysis on it before checking in with the others. “Okay, lay it on me,” he says to Allison.

She gives a serious nod. “The Stojanovic family consisted of fourteen members, half of whom were children, at the time of their death,” she says, and Stiles sees Derek’s hands tighten on the back of the chair he’s leaning on. “Long story short, a group of ogres broke into their house, trashed the place, and killed anything that moved. The only survivor was Dragan, the Elder we met at the Conclave, who got knocked out and actually pinned under the body of his brother, so the ogres didn’t notice he was still alive.”

“That can’t have gone anywhere with the local police,” Erica says.

“From the reports, it looks like they were convinced that the family was somehow involved with the Russian mob, presumably because they couldn’t tell the difference between ethnicities,” Allison says. “They pinned it on some thugs that were arrested for other mob hits and closed the case.”

“It’s actually pretty common for that to happen,” Stiles says. “Some serial killers have had dozens of cases pinned to them that they had nothing to do with, because police departments hate having cold cases lying around.” He waves this aside. “What did Dragan say?”

“He went along with it,” Allison says. “Probably didn’t want to have to explain ogres to the police. He was already over seventy, so the police figured his son was the one involved in the mob and didn’t question him too heavily.”

“Poor guy,” Mac says.

“Yeah, I almost wish I had gone a little easier on him at the Conclave,” Stiles says. “Well, what’s done is done. He didn’t exactly endear himself to us. Any idea what happened to the ogres?”

“According to hunter records, Martin Drake tracked them down and killed them.”

“Convenient,” Stiles says, and Allison nods. “But hardly proof. He would undoubtedly just say that doing that was his job, and it’d be impossible to argue with that. I suppose nobody bothered to ask why the ogres had targeted the Stojanovics.”

Scott just gives a shrug. “They were ogres. The Stojanovics were hunters. It wasn’t exactly something that took a rocket scientist to figure out.”

“Okay. So there might not be anything to work with there. At least, not much.” Stiles chews on his lower lip. “Most hunters keep their home base very secure, though. Can you imagine trying to break into Chris’ house? He’s got like four layers of security. Plus Victoria lives there.”

Everyone gives a little snort. Then Allison says, “No, you’re right. When we went to Ariah’s house, the same sort of thing. It took my dad two days to even figure out where Stella Jones operated out of. But it might not be universal. I mean, look at Wednesday’s house. That was just a house.”

“A house with more booby traps than friggin’ Fort Knox,” Sketch speaks up. “They didn’t have much money, but they made up for it with cleverness. Plus they’ve all got magic protections, you know, mountain ash and that sort of thing.”

Stiles nods and turns back to Allison. “I suppose the police report didn’t mention anything about that?”

“Nope,” she says. “Just that it was forced entry. Now, it was in the evening, so the security system might not have been armed, and an ogre could beat down even a steel-reinforced door. But that would take time, and almost all hunter headquarters have back exits, panic rooms. I can’t imagine the Stojanovics would just sit there while waiting to be beaten to death by ogres.”

“So they got in somehow,” Stiles says, nodding. “Okay. We need to talk to Dragan. See what he didn’t tell the police.”

“I’ll call my dad,” Allison says.

Stiles nods. “Okay, next,” he says, and looks over at Derek and the others.

Derek lets out a breath. Then he looks at Ray. “Why don’t you take it from the top, since you were here?” he suggests.

Ray nods. “Shosh had been our alpha ‘bout fifteen years. We’d been a collection of misfits, really, but she was a good alpha. We had a truce with the Arnelles, basically an ‘I don’t bother you, you don’t bother me’ kind of thing. They checked up on us occasionally but were never real insulting about it. So then Patterson came down out of nowhere – he was from up north somewhere – and killed her without even a warnin’. Took control of the pack and started makin’ everyone lick his boots. People who argued, they disappeared. We were big enough that he could lose a few without it mattering too much. Plus he started to turn some people to add ‘em to the pack – people nobody would miss or ask too many questions ‘bout.”

“Like me,” Sketch says, glancing up from where he’s been brooding in a corner. “I was twelve, homeless, druggie mom, no dad. I’d dropped out of school and even the truancy officers didn’t look for me. I would’ve gone with him if he’d asked. Not that he did.”

Ray gives another nod. “It got so bad, I went to Betty and told her what was going on, told her that we needed help. They knew some of it, they’d noticed that people were gone. They sure weren’t stupid. We talked about it and they decided that I’d have a better chance of killing him than they would – and I wanted to, ‘cause if they did the pack wouldn’t have an alpha. Betty said she was gonna get me something I could use. The next day I found a little bottle of silver nitrate under our front step. But Patterson had already left for the day, gone out to do whatever he did. I didn’t find out the Arnelles were dead until the next day. ‘Bout a week later, I finally managed to get close enough to Patterson to stick him with a syringe full of silver. He never knew what hit him. I brought his head over to the Arnelles to show ‘em it was done.”

He lets out a long, slow breath. “Lucy answered the door, and she was small back then, all red hair and pigtails and gawky limbs everywhere. There I’m standing on her doorstep holding a head in a box like I’m in some horror movie. But she knew who I was. And she knew what I had. She looked at the box and asked ‘is that him?’ and I told her yeah, it was. She said thanks, took the box, and closed the door.”

“So what actually happened to them?” Scott asks.

“They were out on an early morning hunt,” Derek says. “About an hour south of here, where there had been a body found in the woods. Turned out to be unrelated – guy killed by his business partner who dumped his body. But their car died on the way home. They pulled off, tried to fix it, got ambushed.”

“That’s a bunch of lines of inquiry, great,” Stiles says. “I need to find out where Patterson was from, what happened to his pack if he ever had one. We need the case file of whatever ‘unrelated’ murder that was. And we need to know exactly what was wrong with the car. What did the police say?”

“They said it looked like a wild animal attack, probably a bear,” Mac says. “No arrests made, not much of an investigation. It doesn’t seem fishy, though. They were in an area with known wild animals, early in the morning when they’re often active, and the wounds would have been pretty consistent. I don’t think anyone there tried to shove it under the rug or anything – it just looked like the reasonable answer.”

“And of course Wednesday’s family wouldn’t have pushed for a more thorough investigation because they knew exactly what had happened to them,” Stiles says. “Well, we can ask Grandma Arnelle if she knows more about what had happened to the car. I’ll e-mail my dad about getting the other case file. In the meantime . . .” He pulls up his e-mail to see if Lydia has gotten back to him, which she has. “Okay, here’s what our resident genius has to say,” he says, and begins to read out loud.

“ ‘There are several statistical anomalies in the report you sent,’ “ he says. “ ‘Supernatural attacks have definitely been on the rise in the Arnelle territory, but that is not entirely unusual. In fact, there has been a generalized slow increase in supernatural violence since the e-mail you sent out last summer. One can assume that this is because of the conflicts between the various hunter families and supernatural creatures finding out about the prisons.

“ ‘However, the increase in the Arnelle territory actually began prior to that trend. While supernatural violence has been overall stable during the last decade in the surrounding territories, the Arnelles have been having increasing difficulty since about eight years ago. It has a tendency to increase gradually, plateau for six months to a year, then begin to increase again. This sort of gradual increase with pleateaus brings to mind the metaphor about the frog in boiling water.’ “

“What metaphor is that?” Ray asks.

“If you put a frog in boiling water, it’ll jump right back out,” Scott says. “But if you put a frog in tepid water, then gradually increase the heat, they don’t notice, and they won’t jump out even after it becomes uncomfortably hot.”

“So, frogs are stupid?” Sketch says.

“I don’t know that it’s based on actual amphibian facts,” Scott says, with a snort. “The point is just, be careful what you get used to. Because sometimes things get bad and you don’t notice.”

“Or in this case, Lydia’s point is that whoever was behind this was allowing the violence to stagnate so the Arnelles wouldn’t notice the overall increase,” Stiles says. “Continuing on . . . ‘Additionally, most of the hunter territories had a sudden spike of violence after your e-mail blast, but the Arnelle territory suffered no such spike, indicating, again, that the violence there is carefully arranged rather than naturally occurring. Coincidentally – or likely not – spikes in the Arnelle territory are often followed by drops in the Drake territory, suggesting that he’s either driving supernatural creatures off his territory and onto hers, or capturing them and then specifically aiming them.

“ ‘Lastly,’” Stiles says, “ ‘although violence is higher on the Arnelle territory and hunter/human casualties are higher, the casualty rate among the perpetrators is generally lower. We know Wednesday is competent, so to me that suggests that werewolves or other creatures are being instructed to cause trouble and then get out of dodge before they can be killed. Any way you slice it, it’s an unusual finding.’”

There’s a moment of silence. Ray heaves a sigh and goes to the refrigerator to get himself a beer and a round of sodas for the others. “Okay,” he says. “This is interesting and all, but there ain’t no way we can tie it to Drake, is there?”

“Well, if he’s paying, bribing, extorting, or threatening werewolves into coming down here to cause trouble, and we can find them and get them to admit this, then hell yes, we can,” Stiles says. “But where would he be getting them? He doesn’t have a prison . . .”

“That we know of,” Allison remarks.

“True,” Stiles says, “but you know what strikes me as interesting? How he keeps pushing west and southward and never seems to look north. I wonder if he has some sort of deal with the Stoddard family, that they’ll keep him supplied with monsters if he keeps his greedy little paws off their land.”

“I don’t know,” Scott says. “To be honest, the Stoddards don’t really seem afraid of anybody.”

“Fair,” Stiles says, “but the only way to know for sure is to ask.”

“Since the Stoddards won’t talk to us, especially not about their prison, I’m not sure how you plan to go about that,” Erica says.

“You know, I’m pretty sure I could actually call up Sally Stoddard and say ‘hey, wanna go grab some lunch and talk about your hunter prison’ and she would totally accept that offer,” Stiles says, “but it’s probably not a good idea. Things down here are crazy enough without getting her involved. But if Drake has a prison, we might be able to find it.” He’s quiet for a long minute. “You know what would be a really exciting development right now?” he asks, and the others give him an expectant look. “Tax records.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	6. Chapter 6

 

“Found it!” Mac declares, and several people in the room jolt back to consciousness. It’s late Wednesday, and they’re surrounded by discarded Chinese food containers, and half of the pack is asleep. Stiles is immediately next to Mac, leaning over her shoulder to see what she found. “Drake purchased a defunct state prison in 2013.”

“Hot damn,” Stiles says.

Erica yawns and gets up, shifting back to her human form as she does so. Research is not Erica’s forte. “So, while most of the hunters looked on the prisons as a bad thing and started a campaign to stop using them, Drake took it as a how-to guide?”

“That’d be my guess,” Mac says. “There’s other payments here he’s made to different contractors. All deducted off his taxes as work related. Which, okay, technically they were. If we want to split hairs.”

“I’ll leave that to the IRS,” Stiles says. “Okay. Where are we looking?”

“It’s right on the border between Ohio and West Virginia,” Mac says. “Apparently it closed down in 2002 because of concerns about asbestos. The government dithered around for a while about whether or not it was worth doing renovations or whether they should just bulldoze it and put something else there. They tried to get people to buy it – prison privatization is a _whole_ other problem that I could talk about at some length – but nobody bit until suddenly, in 2013, it was sold to Drake.”

“How far?” Stiles asks.

Mac is already typing. “About four hours.”

“Blech,” Stiles says.

“Do we actually need to go there?” Scott asks. “It’s not like we can stage a jail break. I mean, not with our current resources. Do you have any idea what the others would say to us if we attacked a jail without them?”

“Lydia would use words we don’t know and it would be very uncomfortable,” Erica agrees.

Stiles nods. “I want to scope the place out, though. I mean, if he’s actually imprisoning werewolves and then siccing them on Wednesday’s territory, that’s kind of important.”

“We’ll go,” Ray says. “Y’all have to be back at the hotel tonight or Drakes’ spies will report back to him, right? But no one’s watching us.”

Stiles considers for a minute. He doesn’t like it. There’s always going to be a part of himself that dislikes leaving things to other people. But Ray has as much of a stake in this as he does, and possibly more. “Okay,” he says. “But recon only. Do _not_ make a move, or you’ll blow the whole thing. Just get me some pictures and stuff.”

“Got it,” Ray says. “I’ll drop y’all off at your car on the way.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. He has to hope that Drake’s bug doesn’t include a GPS tracker, because otherwise he’ll be wondering what the hell they were doing at Mammoth Cave for eight hours. He’s pretty sure that the cave tour doesn’t take that long. But there’s only so much he can plan for. “And when you’ve gotten the intel, text me, don’t call me.”

“Right. Ears everywhere.”

They head back to the hotel, and Stiles is already thinking about how he isn’t going to sleep a wink while he’s waiting to hear. They make sure to enter the lobby loudly talking about how much fun they had hiking around, to make sure that Drake’s spies see them. Then they settle back down in the hotel room. It’s late, and they all agree to pack it in for the night.

By now, Stiles has a variety of information, and he starts sifting through it. He wants to focus on the Arnelle murder, mostly because it was more recent. Everything that happened with the Stojanovic family was so long ago now that it would be more difficult to uncover the truth. Besides, unless Dragan is willing to talk to him – and Stiles will be surprised if he is – then that’s a dead end anyway.

The first case file he pulls up is only useless for ruling out a possibility. The “unrelated” murder in the woods that Betty and Curtis had gone to investigate is well and truly unrelated. Two men who ran a business together had gotten in an argument about money. One man killed the other and then dumped his body in the woods. There was DNA evidence. The man had been convicted and given a life sentence, and in fact had died in prison about two years earlier. There’s absolutely nothing useful there, so Stiles pushes that aside.

The information about the car is relatively useless. He’s a halfway decent mechanic; he would have to be, driving a Jeep that was built in the eighties. So although it’s possible that the transmission problems that Arnelles had could have been due to sabotage, it’s also possible that it was genuine car trouble. Without seeing the remains of the engine, there was no way to know. And the police hadn’t looked at the engine. It had clearly never occurred to them that the car trouble might have been the first step in a brutal double homicide.

That leaves him with Patterson, which was the lead he wanted to follow anyway. But it isn’t exactly a rare name. There are almost four thousand people named John Patterson in the United States. He’s going to have to narrow it down.

After a few moments of thought, he texts Ravinder. ‘you up?’

Ravinder never responds as quickly as Justin does, because he wasn’t raised on a cell phone the same way. About five minutes pass before Ravinder replies with, ‘Yes, we’re in Australia. Do you need something?’

‘gonna call you,’ Stiles texts back. Then he walks over to the bed where Derek is sleeping, curled up in his wolf form. He can’t make the call from their room, but if he wanders off by himself, the others will, rightfully, have apoplexy. He gives Derek a gentle shake. Derek opens one eye and shows his teeth. Stiles puts a finger over his lips, then beckons for Derek to follow him and points to the pile of clothes Derek left in a corner.

Derek heaves a sigh, but then shifts and climbs out of bed. He quickly gets dressed and then follows Stiles out of the hotel room. It’s two in the morning, and the halls are empty and silent. As long as he avoids the lobby, nobody will see them leave. He goes down a back stairwell and out into the parking lot.

“What are we doing?” Derek asks, yawning and stretching.

“Making a call without being overheard,” Stiles says, tapping the screen of his phone.

Ravinder picks up on the first ring. “Namaste, Stiles.”

“Namaste,” Stiles replies. “Got a few questions about an alpha that died in 2009, if you have a minute.”

“That was quite some time ago,” Ravinder says. “I don’t know how much help I can be.”

“Yeah, I know,” Stiles says, because he also knows that Ravinder has a memory like a steel trap. He remembers every alpha that they ever tested. “His name was John Patterson. This would have been in Kentucky, or at least America somewhere.”

“The name is unfamiliar,” Ravinder says. “I don’t believe we ever did a trial for him.”

Stiles grimaces. “Okay. I need background information. You guys always just show up when a new alpha pops up. How? Do you have, like, alpha radar or something?”

At this, Ravinder chuckles. “No. There is a network of sorcerers that we use. They monitor the . . . how can I put this? The natural flow of power. I confess I don’t know exactly how it works, so suffice to say, when one alpha dies and transfers his power to another, they’re aware of this. And then they notify us. It used to be very dramatic and old-fashioned. Have you seen the Lord of the Rings movies?”

“Dude, I cosplayed as Frodo when I was a freshman in high school,” Stiles says. “Don’t insult me.”

Ravinder is still laughing. “Their system for notifying us reminded me very much of the Beacons of Amon Din. Up until Justin took over, and he insisted that they get with the twentieth century and start texting him. Which they did, quite grumpily I might add.”

“Okay, but they don’t give you all the information, do they?” Stiles asks. “Like, when you guys came to test me. You knew where I was, but you didn’t know _who_ I was. Kali expected it to be Derek and was surprised when it wasn’t.”

“That is correct,” Ravinder says. “All they can tell us is the location. From there, we have to follow our own senses.”

“So if someone was turned into an alpha in, say, Canada,” Stiles says, “and then immediately got on a plane to Hawaii . . .”

“We would have a very difficult time locating them, this is true,” Ravinder says. “And some alphas have indeed been able to avoid the trial that way, although generally speaking, we track them down eventually.”

“Well, shit, that doesn’t help me at all,” Stiles says, “because I know this guy’s name, but nothing about when or where he became an alpha. That’s precisely the information that I _need_. But will you do me a favor? I have a hunch that this guy became an alpha right before he stirred up the shit that I’m investigating. So will you ask your Beacon Lighters if anyone became an alpha in early 2009, that you guys then didn’t test for whatever reason?”

“They’re not precisely talkative,” Ravinder says, “but I will ask.”

“Thanks. Text me the info, if you would. I’m being watched and overheard most of the time.”

“Very well. I – ” There’s some noise in the background. Then he says, “Cora sends her love, and she absolutely is not asking for more of your sugar cookies.”

Stiles grins. “I’ll see what I can do about not sending more,” he says.

Derek leans over and says, “I love you, Cora,” because he always does, any time Stiles calls anyone in the alpha pack. He knows that she’ll overhear it on her end and probably scowl tremendously. Stiles says goodbye and hangs up, and then yawns, standing there for a few moments without speaking. “You should get some sleep,” Derek says.

“Yeah, but I won’t until I hear from Ray, and hopefully that’ll be soon,” Stiles says. “Then I can catch a few hours. I’ll work on the Stojanovic case for a little while, I guess.”

Derek growls at him, but doesn’t actively protest. They enter the room as quietly as possible, and he curls up at Stiles’ feet while Stiles gets back to work.

Just past three, Stiles gets a series of texts from Ray. ‘Prison definitely in use,’ the first one says. ‘Lots of heartbeats. Too many to count. Could smell a few non-wolf creatures. Definitely a hag, maybe a troll or an ogre. Took pictures. What now?’

Stiles breathes a sigh of relief that Ray obeyed his orders. ‘I’ll look at them tomorrow,’ he says. ‘Gonna get some sleep. You should too.’ He futzes on Google for a minute, then adds, ‘Pick us up tomorrow, Barren River Lake State Park. Eleven AM?’

‘okay,’ is Ray’s reply. It won’t give him a lot of time to sleep after he drives back from the prison, but he’ll get a few hours, which is better than nothing.

Stiles sheds his clothes and crawls into bed. He’s asleep within minutes.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

“I always wanted to go to a lake in Kentucky in the middle of winter,” Scott says the next morning, as Stiles is telling them all ‘the plan’ for the day. “Glad I’m gonna cross that off my bucket list.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Stiles tells him, amused. “It’ll be good for all of us to get a chance to run around and burn off some energy. Anyway, I’m not driving four hours to go to St. Louis. That’s too far for my taste. You can go there on your own some time.”

“It’s really not that great,” Derek says. “Seriously. It’s a big arch. Whoop-dee-freakin’-doo.”

Erica snickers, and Stiles shepherds the pack out of the hotel room and to the car. It’s mid-morning, only ten AM, so they have plenty of time. He lets Scott drive so he can go over the dossier that Veronica compiled him on Martin Drake.

It’s actually fascinating reading. Drake is a real American success story. He was born into a low income family in Pennsylvania and maintained straight As while working at their restaurant. He got into hunting when he was in high school, after some deep-dwelling monster had killed several miners from their town. He had been as good at that as he was at everything else. In his second year of college, he had been diagnosed with leukemia, and had to put the hunting career on hold while he went through treatment. He went into remission, graduated with a 4.0 GPA, and joined up with the Stojanovic family as soon as he graduated. He had been more of a manager than an actual hunter, facilitating weapons transfers, sweeping things under rugs, and securing financial support.

Stiles has to wonder exactly how much of the perfect grades and rise to stardom had to do with underhanded behavior, since Drake clearly has no problem with that. But it’s all in the distant past, and probably unimportant. He has ample proof of the kind of person Drake is without having to dig for it. So the story is interesting, but it doesn’t really help him.

It’s not until they’re on the beach and they can be assured that nobody can overhear them that he says, “Okay, guys. Here’s the plan. Ray’s confirmed that Drake does in fact have a prison. We need to prove that he’s using it to hold werewolves until he can coerce them to attack Arnelle lands. And what’s the easiest way to do that?”

Derek sighs. Erica groans. Mac blinks, then half-raises her hand and says, “Get attacked?”

“Got it in one!” Stiles says. “So once we’ve talked to Ray, we’re going to go back to our hotel room. We’re going to tell Drake’s little bugs that we’re going to go talk to Grandma Arnelle about how we suspect that Drake had something to do with Betty and Curtis’ death. No _way_ will he allow us to do that. He’ll send someone after us for sure. We’re going to ‘meet Ray at his place’, because that will give us a nice isolated spot for him to send someone to attack and then ‘go to the Arnelles once it’s late enough that the little kids will be in bed’ because we need to give him time to get someone here from West Virginia.”

“Jesus, Stiles,” Derek mutters, but then lifts his hands in surrender because he knows that the group of them are more than adequate to take on a few werewolves.

Erica isn’t so sure. “What if he sends an ogre or something?”

“Ogres are weak at the knees and ankles,” Allison says. “All that weight.”

Stiles gestures to Allison and says, “Good thing we have an expert hunter with us.” Erica rolls her eyes. “But I want to script this carefully. Ad lib will get us caught. So we’re going to plan every detail. When dealing with Martin Drake . . . pretend you’re dealing with me. A sociopathic, power-hungry version of me.”

“Gotta get all our ducks in a row,” Scott agrees, nodding.

“Exactly. In the meantime, I’m still waiting to hear from Ravinder, and Chris was going to see if he could track down Dragan and get him to talk to me, so we have plenty of other stuff to do. Let’s get to work.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Ray is one hundred percent not sure that setting themselves up to get attacked is the best plan. But after an hour going over the photographs he’s gotten of the facility, they all agree that there’s absolutely no way that they’re going to be able to stage a jailbreak. If they’re going to talk to someone Drake has kept imprisoned, this is how to do it.

They spend an hour or so planning, then head back to Ray’s place so they can rig it up with some booby traps and defensive measures. He’s gathered his pack there, and they’re all given strict instructions to stay inside, lest they accidentally blow themselves up. That being accomplished, it’s about three o’clock when they get back to the hotel room.

At that point, Stiles pretends to take a phone call. He makes sure to keep it vague, a lot of ‘uh huh’ and ‘that’s interesting’. Then he hangs up.

“What was that about?” Derek asks.

“Well, I asked a couple people to look into Martin Drake for me,” Stiles says. “I mean, regardless of whether or not Wednesday is going to be any help at all, I still don’t like the idea of this marriage. If Drake keeps taking territory like this, it’s going to be trouble for everyone in the end.”

“Yeah, ‘cause that’s our business,” Erica says.

Stiles shrugs. “When have I ever confined myself to the things that are my business?” he asks, and she laughs. “Anyway, I think Drake has had designs on this territory for years. I had a hunch that Betty and Curtis Arnelle’s deaths might not have been accidental.”

“Well, they were killed by an alpha werewolf, so . . .” Allison says.

Stiles waves that aside. “Okay, yes, but my point is, where the fuck did he come from? A beta werewolf might look for an alpha to kill, so he could take over their pack. But alphas generally don’t just move around and take over other packs. I think Patterson had some ties back to Drake, so I have people looking into it for me.” He has to be careful here, because they _don’t_ know what Patterson’s ties to Drake were. “I want to go talk to Wednesday’s grandmother. She might know more about it.”

“But what’s the point?” Allison asks. “Say Drake did have Wednesday’s parents killed. That was six years ago. Even if we could prove it, what difference would it make?”

“Drake’s gotten his hooks in Wednesday somehow,” Stiles says. “Blackmail or extortion or something. Maybe we can blackmail him back.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Allison sounds skeptical. “Okay, what’s your plan?”

“I don’t want to go right now,” Stiles says. “There’s kids there. Let’s wait until tonight. And I want to go talk to the pack’s current alpha. He knows more about what happened back then. I emailed him back we came here, so I have his address. We’ll talk to him and come up with a plan. I think he knows Mrs. Arnelle, so maybe he can get us an in.”

“Sounds good,” Derek says, and they troop back out of the hotel room.

“And now, we wait,” Stiles says under his breath.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stiles hates waiting. He’s extremely bad at it. Always has been. His version of ‘waiting’ usually comes down to ‘pace around, gesture frenetically, and wrack his brains for the smallest clue he might have missed’. It also usually results in baking, which is, at the least, about to make him extremely popular with Ray’s pack.

His hands are in cookie dough when his phone buzzes, and Derek reaches over and takes it out of Stiles’ back pocket. “Text from Ravinder,” he says. “Your hunch was right. The Beacons of Gondor confirm that an alpha was made in January of 2009, somewhere in Virginia.” There’s a pause, and the phone buzzes again. “Ravinder doesn’t remember ever testing an alpha by the name of John Patterson, but he _does_ remember testing Ray, and that was in April of the same year.”

Stiles nods. “So Patterson became an alpha pretty much right before he showed up down here. It does seem like he became an alpha for the express purpose of coming down here and stirring shit up.”

“But that still doesn’t tie him to Drake,” Allison says. “It’s purely circumstantial.”

“No, you’re right,” Stiles says. “And I won’t be able to tie him to Drake until I can track down more info on him. But I have no idea how to do that. It’s just too common a name.”

Derek grimaces. He looks at Ray and says, “You don’t happen to have anything of his, do you?”

“Hell no,” Ray says. “We got rid of all his stuff. Burned it in a bigass bonfire. Didn’t exactly think we’d need it.”

“What happened to his body?” Stiles asks, although it’s without much hope. It would take a very special set of circumstances to get any evidence off a body that was six years old.

“Brought the head to Lucy, like I told you,” Ray says. “Burned the rest.”

“Shit,” Stiles says. “That’s not helpful. Okay, did he have another place that he lived? Or did he have a job while he was here?”

“Man, he didn’t tell us stuff like that,” Ray says. “We were the enemy and he knew it. We all lived in this huge house up north of here by twenty, thirty miles maybe. I didn’t want to stay there afterwards, so we took off. But it didn’t belong to Patterson; it was Shosh’s. I don’t know what happened to it after we left but there won’t be any paperwork that ties Patterson to it.”

“What about his car?” Sketch pipes up from where he’s been greedily eyeing the cookie dough.

“Do you still have it?” Stiles asks, surprised.

Sketch snorts. “No. But can’t you look it up by the plate number?”

“Well, sure, if you happen to have a picture or something – ”

“Don’t need it,” Sketch says. “I know it.” He sees Stiles’ skeptical look and laughs. “Patterson was a smug, rich prick. He drove a BMW and the plate read ‘M-Y-B-M-R’. My Beemer. Put that in front of a poor, resentful twelve-year-old, ain’t no way he’ll be forgetting it any time soon.”

“Sketch, you’re brilliant,” Stiles says. He looks down at his sticky hands and says, “Mac?”

“I’m on it,” she says, sitting down with her laptop. Two minutes later, while Stiles is finishing scooping the first set of cookies, she says, “Well, it’s a good thing we didn’t perseverate on the name, because it was totally false! John Patterson was actually Jesse Pendleton.”

“Oh my God!” Stiles nearly knocks the cookie sheet off the counter. “I know that name! He’s in the hunter app!”

“We bothered to list someone who died six years ago?” Allison asks, surprised.

“I don’t think we knew he was dead,” Stiles says. He’s itching to reach for his phone, but Derek is already on it.

“You’re right; he’s listed as being MIA,” Derek says.

“We listed anyone MIA because we didn’t know if they might pop up again,” Stiles says. “Where’s he from?”

Derek’s mouth curves in a grimace. “Pennsylvania. He’s listed as being one of Stoddard’s guys.”

“He might have worked for Stoddard, but I bet he knew Drake,” Stiles says. “He grew up in Pennsylvania. I bet they worked together before Drake cut south to work with the Stojanovics. Okay. It’s not solid, but it’s certainly suggestive. What else can we get on him?”

“Well, public records aren’t particularly compelling, but Ray, you wanna come over here and verify that it’s the same guy?” Mac asks.

Ray nods and heads over. He looks over her shoulder at the driver’s license picture that she’s displaying, and his jaw tics. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s Patterson.”

“Okay.” Mac is still typing. “Born in Wilkes-Barre in 1968, graduated high school, went to college in Philadelphia – ”

“Temple University?” Stiles interrupts. “That’s where Drake went.”

“Nope, sorry. U Penn.” Mac keeps typing. “Did two years there but didn’t graduate. Married in 1992, divorced 1995, no kids. Worked for – hey, this is interesting – the corrections department in Ohio. Last known address in Akron.”

“Wow, what a pile of useless,” Erica says.

“No, that’s not useless at all,” Stiles says. “Corrections officers do _not_ get paid enough to afford a Beemer with vanity plates, which means he was definitely making money under the table. And Drake is the one who wants to turn hunting into a for-profit industry.” He slides one sheet of cookies into the oven and starts prepping the next. “Actually, if you think about it, the way he’s been slowly picking away at the Arnelle territory is basically the same thing. Capture werewolves. Coordinate attacks. Convince people they need your help. And then you can charge an arm and a leg for it.”

“It’s a classic protection racket,” Derek says, nodding. “Just with werewolves instead of mobsters.”

“Okay, but we still need it to be more solid,” Allison says. “If we’re going to turn the hunters against Drake, we need _really_ compelling evidence.”

“Do we?” Scott asks. “I thought they already hated him.”

“Yeah, they do, but – ” Stiles remembers that he can’t mention Wednesday’s baby at the last second. “But Wednesday was consorting with werewolves, and they won’t look kindly on that, either. And let’s not forget that these hunters might hate Drake, but they also hate _me_. Well, a lot of them, anyway. They won’t take my word on this. We need proof.”

Derek’s head comes up suddenly. “That’ll have to wait,” he says, “We’ve got company.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	7. Chapter 7

 

The attack comes before Stiles was really expecting it. Drake must have flown the werewolves in from the prison, or even had a few on hand in case of emergency, because it’s barely twilight.

Derek might have heard the other werewolves coming some distance away, but the first physical sign that they’re under attack is when the electric tripwire that Allison had rigged up sounds off. They’re working off a budget, of course, and he’s no Tony Stark. But they managed to put up some impressive defensive measures, given the givens. They have some traps up, and Allison has supplied them with tasers and mace. Stiles doesn’t want to kill anyone if he doesn’t have to, especially since he’s guessing that most of their attackers aren’t acting under their own volition.

The fight is short and bloody, and he himself doesn’t really take part. At the end, they have one badly injured werewolf and one that was caught in a trap. Stiles thinks there were several more attackers, but they clearly beat feet when they saw how the wind was blowing.

While Scott and Mac are trying to help the injured werewolf, Stiles helps Allison get down the one that’s hanging upside down. He’s still snarling and swiping at them, and Allison gives him an unimpressed look and a dose of kanima venom. It only works for a few minutes, but that’s more than enough to get him down and duct taped to a chair.

“Okay!” Stiles says, pulling up a chair and sitting down across from the werewolf. He’s already got the camera set to record. He’s got blood on his face, although his wounds are healed, and a desperate expression on his face. “Relax, I’m not going to hurt you. What’s your name, pal?”

“Lloyd,” he mutters.

“Okay, Lloyd,” Stiles says. “Mind telling me why you were trying to kill me?”

Lloyd says nothing, gaze trained on the floor.

“C’mon, buddy. What did I ever do to you?” Stiles tries coaxing him, but he just continues to stare downward. “Okay, so you’ve been told not to say anything if you got captured,” Stiles says. He heaves a sigh. “That’s unfortunate. It means I’m going to have to play hardball. We’re gonna have to drive all the way to the prison you came from and try to break in, so it looks like you told us where it is.”

“No!” Lloyd blurts out.

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “That would be a problem for you, I take it?”

Lloyd chews on his lower lip and looks around nervously. “No, you can’t,” he pleads. “My pack – my family – they’re still in there. If he thinks I betrayed him, he’ll kill them! He said if we managed to kill you, he’d let them go!”

Stiles’ jaw tightens. “Who’s he, Lloyd?” he asks, and Lloyd hangs his head. “Come on. You know and I know, but I gotta have you say it.”

“I . . . I can’t,” Lloyd says. “He’ll kill them.”

“Lloyd, I hate to break this to you, but he never had any intention of letting them go,” Stiles says. “And he knew there wasn’t a very good chance that you and your friends would manage to kill us. Come on, five betas against two alphas and like another dozen betas? No. He was either trying to scare us off, or, more likely, keep us busy while he went to go talk to Grandma Arnelle and made sure she wouldn’t tell us anything, or he would kill her granddaughter. So. Who was it?”

Lloyd closes his eyes for a long minute. “Drake,” he finally says. “Martin Drake.”

“How long have you been in his prison?”

“About six months now. Half my pack was killed, including our alpha, the other half captured.”

“And he specifically told you . . .”

“To come here. Try to kill anything that moved. And that if we succeeded in killing either alpha, he’d let the rest of my pack go.” Lloyd’s opening up now, seeing that there’s nothing else he can do. “All five of us were from different packs, we all had people on the inside. He’s going to kill them.”

“Relax, Lloyd, I won’t let that happen,” Stiles says. “He’s not going to have any reason to kill your pack. He’ll keep them in case they can be of further use to him.”

“But if he knows I told you any of this – ”

“He’s not going to find that out,” Stiles says, “because he’s going to think that we killed you in the fight. Okay? We’re going to fake your death, we’re going to have you hide out here, and when I’m done taking care of Drake, we’re going to get your pack out of there.”

Lloyd raises his eyes in a pleading expression. “My daughter is in there,” he says, voice trembling. “She’s only eleven. Please. Please help me.”

Stiles’ jaw tightens and his eyes are crimson. Everyone there can see the silent tension and rage in the set of his shoulders. But is voice comes out calm. “Okay, Lloyd,” he says. “Here’s what we’re going to do . . .”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Another carefully scripted routine follows. They get back in the car and drive back to the hotel, talking the whole way about the ambush. Stiles pretends to be pissed, Allison calls her dad to tell him ‘what happened’. She’s careful to be a little bit vague. Stiles wants Drake to think that they killed Lloyd and the others, but he doesn’t want to come right out and say it. If he were in Drake’s shoes, he would jump at the chance of Stiles admitting to a murder on tape. So instead Allison says, “No, we took care of it” and “Dad, no! Nobody will find what’s left, do you think I’m an idiot?”

Earlier, Derek had expressed concern that Drake might kill Grandma Arnelle to keep her from talking to them, but Stiles doesn’t think he’ll dare. If Mrs. Arnelle truly knew something, he probably would have killed her a long time ago. And he still needs to maintain his control over Wednesday’s backers. A suspicious death is the last thing he wants right now.

Allison hangs up with her dad and says, “Apparently the violence has been bad here for a while, especially since Drake took over Henry’s old territory. He’s not surprised that this happened now. He thinks that they’re probably keyed up about how many hunters there are and didn’t like us being on their territory.”

“Great,” Stiles says. He doesn’t want Drake realizing he knows that he was behind the attack. “Well, it’s too fucking late to go see the Arnelles now, plus I’m covered in blood. Let’s go back to the hotel and take a shower. We can go see her in the morning, and if we traumatize her grandkids, so be it.”

He really doesn’t want to waste his time going to the Arnelle house in the morning. He has a lot to do and less time to do it in. Chris has managed to get in touch with Dragan Stojanovic, and surprisingly, the former Elder has agreed to speak with him. He’s going to fly into Nashville, and they’re going to meet him there. But his plane doesn’t get in until eleven, so at least he has time to go to the Arnelle house.

Allison and Derek go with him, while the others wait in the car. Stiles is wondering exactly what the result will be. Will Grandma Arnelle refuse to talk to him at all? Will she lie? Will she try to poison him? The possibilities are endless. He’s hoping for the first; it’ll take the least amount of time.

Izzy answers the door again, and she gives them the side-eye, but then surprises him by letting them in. Derek glances around, nostrils moving, and he gives his head a quick shake. No smell of Drake. So either he didn’t come to deliver the threat himself, or he covered up his scent afterwards. The latter is certainly possible. The house smells strongly of lemon-scented furniture polish.

Grandma Arnelle is in her seventies, confined to a wheelchair, and wearing glasses that make her eyes look huge. Her hair is entirely white, short and curly. She introduces herself and tells them to call her Mabel. The kitchen is neat, although clearly old, with linoleum that’s peeling up in places and a Formica table with wooden chairs. “So,” she says, “you’ve come about Lucy.”

“Well, sort of,” Stiles says. “That’s what brought me here.” He’s suddenly aware that there are probably listening devices here, too. Why wouldn’t there be? If Drake threatened the Arnelles, he’ll want to make sure that they don’t tattle on him. “But when I was investigating, I found myself wondering about how her parents died. It’s kind of convenient for Drake, wasn’t it?”

“That was six years ago,” Mabel says. “If he’d had anything to do with it, I think he would’ve taken the territory right away. Would’ve made more sense to do it then, when Lucy was younger.”

“That’s true, but wouldn’t it have been kind of obvious?” Stiles asks. “I mean, he took over the Stojanovic territory right after they were killed. If that happened twice . . .”

Mabel shrugs. “Even so. He could have just waited a couple years.”

“But it didn’t work out for him, did it,” Stiles says. “He figured that in a couple years, Lucy would have softened up, and he could come gently take the reins. But she dug her heels in. She was young but this was her parents’ territory and she was going to do right by it. And she told Drake to step off. Am I right?”

“Lucy’s always been kind of headstrong,” Mabel says, with a sigh. “I’m just glad she’s come to her senses.”

“So if you approve of the wedding, why weren’t you invited?” Stiles asks, and sees the corner of Mabel’s mouth twitch.

“I was invited, but it’s hard for me to get around,” Mabel says. “Don’t you think I want to be there?”

Stiles is willing to bet she does, and it has nothing to do with the reasons that she’s giving him. “Yeah. Sorry. I just – ”

“Look, I know you care about Lucy. But she’s doing what she has to do. I know that she’s told you to leave it be. If you really respect her, you’ll listen. She can make her own decisions.”

“Even if that decision is to marry the son of the man who killed her parents?”

Mabel sighs. “You don’t have a scrap of evidence that’s what really happened. You’re graspin’ at straws, boy. Patterson was a werewolf. Killing hunters is what they do. You don’t need to go looking any deeper than that.”

Stiles gives a little nod. “Thanks for your time, Mrs. Arnelle,” he says, and gets to his feet. Derek and Allison turn to follow him. He passes Izzy in the hallway, studying him warily, but doesn’t say anything to her. They get back in the car and he says, “Jesus, this town is full of cowards,” for the benefit of Drake’s bug.

“I’m glad my dad is getting in tonight,” Allison says. “We need to get you out of here.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. He pushes a hand through his hair. “Hey, I was Googling last night for stuff to do. Want to go down to Nashville? It’s only an hour away. World class barbecue. Parks and plantations.”

“Sure,” Derek says. “Why not?”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Chris meets them at the airport, since he changed his flight to get in around the same time as Dragan. He has a surprising guest in tow – Sam Argent, Julien’s son. Stiles greets him with a handshake and Sam squeezes his hand too tightly without even meaning to, his biceps bulging. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I heard Lucy might be in trouble,” Sam says, then adds, “Jake told me.”

“Oh, gotcha,” Stiles says. Sam and Jake are cousins, and Sam looked after him during the Conclave, so he knew that Jake had kept in touch with him by e-mail afterwards. Given all the information gathering they had been doing, it doesn’t surprise him that Jake would have reached out to Sam at some point. “But, uh, what are you doing here?”

Sam gives him a look. “Lucy’s a hunter. If she needs help, I’ll help her. That’s what we do.”

“Nice,” Stiles says, thinking about where he might fit Sam into play. He has a few ideas. “How much has he told you?”

“Just the basics,” Sam says.

They’re interrupted as Dragan arrives. He had to go through customs, since he was flying in from Europe, and he’s clearly traveled light, although not alone. There’s a teenager with tanned skin and black hair behind him, carrying a backpack. According to Chris, who got in touch with him through Mikael, Dragan left the United States to go live with his family after the last Conclave.

“Mr. Stojanovic, nice to see you again,” Stiles says, shaking his hand. “Thanks for agreeing to come see me.”

“Mr. Argent told me it was about the death of my family,” Dragan says, in his heavy accent. “How could I not?”

Stiles nods. “I’m working on a theory.”

Dragan nods a little, then gestures to the teenager standing behind him. “This is my great-grandson, Nikola,” he says. “He will help translate for me. My English has not been so good, since leaving the country.”

“Nice to meet you,” Stiles says, shaking the younger Stojanovic’s hand. He’s relieved to find that Nikola has a much less heavy accent, which is good because he really only understands about two thirds of what Dragan says. “Can I buy you guys lunch?”

He’s been on Yelp and found one of the best barbecue places in the city. It’s packed, and they wind up sitting at two separate tables. Stiles is at a long table with the Stojanovics, the Argents, and Derek. The other three pack members are a few tables down, and none of the werewolves are enjoying the atmosphere. The food, however, is great.

Stiles doesn’t pull any punches. “I think Martin Drake was responsible for what happened to your family.”

Dragan doesn’t flinch. He nods slightly and starts to speak in his native language. Nikola translates. “It doesn’t surprise me. I’ve wondered myself from time to time, but there was never any proof.”

“What can you tell me about what actually happened?” Stiles asks. “I know it can’t be easy to talk about, and I’m sorry to push, but I think Drake has done this more than once. And if he has, I want to make sure he pays for it.”

“It’s not a long story,” Dragan says. “We had just sat down for dinner. There was a loud noise at the front, the door had caved in. We tried to get out through the back, but the door wouldn’t open. Three ogres came in, with clubs.” He spreads his hands and adds, “That’s the last thing I remember.”

Stiles nods slowly. “Any idea why the back door wouldn’t open?”

“No. Could have just been that someone on the outside was holding it shut. Or they could have jammed the lock somehow.” Dragan is quiet for a moment. “Understand, it was very chaotic. There wasn’t time to ask questions or figure things out.”

“So the ogres got in quickly?” Sam chips in. “What sort of security was on your front door?”

“It was reinforced, but not to the point that it would have slowed ogres down much.”

“Any electronic system?”

“Yes, but it was broken. Something had gone wrong in the wiring and Boris, my son, had been trying to get it put back together.”

“That’s convenient,” Stiles says. “Did Drake know it was broken?”

Dragan nods. “All the lieutenants knew.”

Stiles rubs a hand over the back of his head. It’s more circumstantial evidence. Marginally better than what they have so far, since it’s coming from a hunter, instead of a werewolf, but it still isn’t the lock that they need. Drake’s been so careful, he’s beginning to think that maybe he really hasn’t made a mistake.

Seeing that he’s thinking, Allison leans in. “Drake killed the ogres, right? Did that seem weird to you?”

“No,” Dragan says. “Somebody had to hunt them down, after all. Afterwards, when he took control over everything, I had my suspicions. But how could we prove anything? My family was dead, and . . . I did not pursue it. If Drake did further harm, then I regret that, but at the time I was not . . .” His voice trails off. Nikola reaches over and squeezes his forearm gently.

Stiles thanks him, then on a hunch, asks, “Did you ever know a hunter named Jesse Pendleton?”

Dragan gives him a blank look and a shrug, so Stiles takes out his phone and pulls up the information that Mac had sent him earlier. He shows Dragan the picture from Pendleton’s driver’s license. “Ah, he does look familiar,” Dragan says. “It was a long time ago, you understand. I think he might have worked north of us.”

“Do you know if he and Drake knew each other at all?” Stiles asks, and Dragan shakes his head. “Oh well. It was worth a try.”

He’s deep in thought as they leave the restaurant. Nikola says they’re going to stay in Nashville, and Stiles asks if they might be able to make it to the wedding. It’s only an hour away, so Dragan says he can if he needs to. Stiles takes down Nikola’s cell phone number, and they part ways at the restaurant.

“What now?” Allison asks, looking at Stiles. “We’re down to the wire here. The wedding is tomorrow.”

“Trust me, I haven’t forgotten,” Stiles says. He sits down with Chris and Sam and tells them everything they’ve gathered – the vague information from Dragan, the dubious connection to Pendleton/Patterson, the odd circumstances of the Arnelles’ murder. “Do you think it’s enough?”

Chris chews on his lower lip for a few moments, then shakes his head. “It would depend some on who showed up. But I’ve asked around. I know Stella’s coming, and several of the Stoddards. I know that Vanessa isn’t – she’s got enough to handle on her own territory. So, could you swing it, maybe. But I’d want more before I would be confident.”

Stiles rakes his hands through his hair. “I wonder if there’s any way to find out who Pendleton killed to become an alpha. My suspicion is that he and Drake somehow caught an alpha, tortured him or her until they gave Pendleton the bite, and then Pendleton killed them. Poof, an alpha. But it was a long time ago now, and I don’t even know where they would have gotten one from.”

“Yeah,” Chris agrees. “Car was a dead end?”

“The police didn’t even look at the car,” Stiles says. “It just got towed, and if there’s any record of a mechanic looking at it after that, I can’t find it.”

“And the body the Arnelles went to investigate?”

“Totally unrelated, the guy who did it was convicted on DNA evidence and put in jail.”

“Jesus, that’s a lot of dead ends,” Chris says.

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “I feel like there must be something. Patterson, Pendleton, whatever, was down here for three months. I don’t think he meant to be. He was trying to draw the Arnelles out so he could kill them in a fair fight, and it wouldn’t look suspicious. But they were too cautious for his taste. I feel like he and Drake must have coordinated the attack somehow, but however they did it, I just can’t see it.”

“Well, keep looking,” Chris says. “I’ll call Vanessa, see if there’s any way she can make it. And I’ll see if I can find out if Angela Peretti is coming from Florida – I think her mom and Betty Arnelle were friends, so she would probably side with us.”

“Okay.” Stiles mulls it over another minute. “How would you two like to do something incredibly dangerous and foolhardy for me?”

Allison shoots him a look, and Chris sighs. “What now?”

“Drake’s prison,” Stiles says. “Up in West Virginia. I manfully resisted the urge to break in and cause a riot and free everyone. I expect accolades for this,” he adds.

“There’s a gold star in it for you,” Derek deadpans, and Sam gives them a look like they’re speaking in some alien language.

“How would you two,” Stiles continues, gesturing to Chris and Sam, “like to go up there and check things out? Tell them Drake sent you to make sure things stayed quiet and nobody got any ideas before the wedding. Get me some photographs, find out who’s there and what they did to get put there. I got a guy who can show you the way who’ll be real glad to see his family again.”

“You think his guys will buy that without checking in?” Sam asks, frowning.

“Well, fortunately for me, I have a pretty decent hacker,” Stiles says. “And I’m pretty sure that, since I have Drake’s cell phone number, she can make sure he doesn’t get any incoming calls for a few hours without him noticing, especially if it’s late at night and he’s not expecting any calls.” He looks at Chris and says, “Can you make it work?”

Chris thinks it over, then nods. “Yeah.”

“Super,” Stiles says. “Don’t go overboard. You know. Unless you want to. That’d be your business and couldn’t be blamed on me.”

Allison gives a snort of laughter, then kisses her father on the cheek and wishes him happy hunting. He leaves, with Sam in tow, and the rest of them head back to the hotel in Bowling Green. Stiles is thinking things over, still unsure of what else, if anything, they can find. He e-mails his father to look things over and see if he’s missed anything. Werewolves or no, his father is the best detective he knows. If there’s something to find, Tom Stilinski will find it.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow this fic turned out a lot shorter than the others. It's probably because I only have one villain. What was I thinking?

 

When they get back to Bowling Green, he’s surprised and discomfited to see Martin Drake’s dark SUV pulled up out front. He hops out when they pull into their parking space. “Hey, are you guys okay?” he asks. “I heard through the grapevine that you had some werewolf trouble last night.”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Stiles says, wondering exactly how cool he should play this. “Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

“Well, geez, I’m sorry that you had to deal with it,” Drake says. “I hope there aren’t a bunch of werewolves lurking, wanting to get a shot at the hunters who are coming into town. Say, here’s an idea!” he adds, as if this is just occurring to him. “Why don’t you guys come stay at the manor tonight?”

“Oh, no, we couldn’t – ” Stiles starts to respond automatically.

“I insist!” Drake says. “I couldn’t live with myself if any of the guests got hurt while they were in town.”

Allison gives her Disney princess smile and says, “It’s very kind of you, Mr. Drake, but if someone here is after us – most likely after me, given my reputation – then we couldn’t put your family in danger that way. Especially not with Lucy pregnant with your grandson. I would never hear the end of it from my parents!”

That sounds like a great excuse to Stiles, but Drake blows it right off. “Nonsense! We’ve got great security around the manor. You’d be safe as houses. Come on, now, I refuse to take no for an answer.”

Stiles has to admit that he’s stymied by this. Continuing to refuse could have violent results. But the idea of trying to stay in his ‘Stanley Winchester’ persona for an entire day gives him a headache. And he’s got so much he needs to be doing. He’s got case files to go through and phone calls to make. He needs to get Chris and Sam hooked up with Lloyd and Ray so they can show them to the facility. He still wants to try to find out what alpha Pendleton killed. He might be able to link that to Drake. He won’t be able to do anything if he’s setting up place cards at the Drake manor.

Not only that, but Scott, Erica, and Mac are still sitting in the car, pretending they don’t exist. Thank God for tinted windows. He can’t bring them with him, but there’s no way they’ll be able to get out of the car without Drake seeing them. So if he agrees, he’s sentencing them to hang out in a car all day. He supposes that at least Mac has her laptop, and might be able to continue researching.

Drake knows that they have other people with them – his spies have surely reported that – but he doesn’t know that Stiles knows that he knows. Stiles runs that sentence through his mind and inwardly groans. It’s going to take a lot of brainpower to keep up the deceptions – not only acting like he’s undercover, but remembering to act like he doesn’t know Drake knows his cover is blown.

After the moment of awkward silence has gone on too long, Stiles says, “Okay, let us just run into the hotel and get our stuff for tomorrow.”

“Sure, sure!” Drake says, smiling at them. “Let me give you a hand.”

Stiles doesn’t argue, because Drake clearly wants to keep an eye on them, but if he lets Drake accompany them inside, it’ll give the other three a chance to get out of the car. He takes a minute while he’s in the bathroom gathering up some things to text Scott and make sure they’ve done so.

Five minutes later, they’re on their way back to the Drake house, and Stiles is still wracking his brain for some way out of this. Then again, he thinks, maybe this isn’t a bad place for him to be. It’ll certainly let him keep an eye on Wednesday and make sure she’s okay. If he can steal five or ten minutes every hour, he can use it to check his e-mail while his father and the others continue to research for him.

Drake is already talking about how much they have left to do and does Allison want to look over his seating chart and Stiles and Derek can help put together the wedding favors. Stiles grimaces a little but doesn’t argue.

When they get to the Drake house, he ushers them into the huge room that’s going to be used for the wedding. Marty had taken them there during his house tour; it’s a glassed in porch ‘used for entertaining’ with slate floors and beautiful wooden columns. Now it’s been filled with chairs and flowers. Derek looks like he’s in physical pain from how gaudy the room has been made.

“Going to do the wedding in here and then the reception will be out back, weather permitting,” Drake says. “How about we – ”

“Martin?” It’s Wednesday, dressed in a loose lavender tank top and blue jeans. “What are they doing here?”

“Lucy, sugar, just who I wanted to see!” Martin says. “Allison and her friends got attacked by some rogue wolves last night, so I invited them to stay at the manor until after the wedding. Thought they could help out with some of the preparations.”

“Oh,” Wednesday says. The look she gives Stiles is somewhat disappointed. He just gives her a shrug and a rueful smile. Then she says, “That’s good. The hairdresser is going to do some trial stuff with my hair and I need an opinion anyway.”

“Just my type of thing!” Stiles says cheerfully. “Jack, you want to do the goody bags?”

“Sure,” Derek says, as Allison is led off to look at place cards somewhere. Stiles follows Wednesday up to her room, thinking that maybe they’ll get a chance to talk, but the hairdresser is already there. She sits Wednesday down and starts wielding a curling iron with aplomb.

On the upside, nobody is in here to see him, so he can text to his heart’s delight. He exchanges pleasantries with the hairdresser and even makes some suggestions, because he’s gone with Lydia to enough salon appointments that he actually knows what he’s talking about. That’s good, because Wednesday clearly gives no fucks what her hair looks like, and she’s not afraid to mention that.

It occurs to him as he sits there that if he’s planning on accusing Drake of the Arnelles’ murder at the wedding in front of everyone, it would be nice if he could warn Wednesday first. As far as he knows, she has no idea that Drake ordered the murder of his parents. That isn’t the kind of thing he wants to drop on her in front of people.

“So, I saw your grandmother yesterday,” he says, and Wednesday shoots him a look. “I guess she’s not well enough to come to the wedding, so Allison thought it would be nice to go over and ask if there was anything she wanted us to bring, like a wedding present or anything.”

“Uh huh,” Wednesday says.

“Met your younger sister, Izzy,” Stiles continues. “She seems a lot like you. I didn’t realize you had so many siblings. You didn’t mention any at the Conclave.”

“It wasn’t your business,” Wednesday says.

“Fair enough,” Stiles says.

“There!” the hairdresser, a heavyset woman with a thick Southern drawn, says. “How’s that one lookin’, sweetheart?”

Wednesday turns towards the mirror to see the waves framing her face with the tiara perched on top. “It looks okay,” she says. “It’s a little plain.”

“Well, Martin said you’d probably prefer something plain,” the hairdresser says.

“How about an updo?” Stiles suggests. “You know, so it won’t be in her way.”

“Sure, let’s try one!” the hairdresser says, wetting down the hair and combing it straight again. “I do love a good double braided bun.”

While she’s braiding, Stiles says, “I guess you really must have done a lot of work to raise your younger siblings, huh? Since your grandmother's blind. They seemed like a pretty healthy pack of rugrats.”

Wednesday can’t nod, and she clearly doesn’t want to discuss her siblings. But she seems to suspect that Stiles is going somewhere with that, and says, “Yeah, Billy was only a year old when my parents died.”

“That sucks,” Stiles says. “Your grandmother is really glad that you’re letting Drake give you a hand with things, though.” He’s careful now, so careful. He doesn’t know if this room is bugged, although it wouldn’t surprise him. Either way, the hairdresser might report back on anything he says. “I guess things have kind of been bad here for a while. She said Drake would have come help after your parents died, but you wouldn’t let him back then.”

“Uh huh,” is all Wednesday says in reply.

“That must’ve bummed him out, after he did all that work,” Stiles says.

“What wo – ” He sees it hit her, then, sees her eyes go wide as she makes the connection. Then she yelps suddenly. “Ow, you pulled a bit there.”

“Oh, sorry, honey,” the hairdresser says.

Wednesday had covered well, and now Stiles needs to back off. “Oh, well, I guess he coordinated some stuff with the lieutenants and everything after your parents died, that’s all. That’s looking good, Selma. You know what would be neat, would be one of those braids that comes along the back and then sweeps off to the side.”

“We can try that next!” she says cheerfully, still pinning the double French braid into place.

When she’s done with that and they’ve all oohed and aahed appropriately, Wednesday says, “I need to go use the bathroom before we start the next one. There’s sweet tea downstairs if you’re thirsty.”

“Don’t mind if I do!” Selma says, heading towards the stairs.

Wednesday beckons Stiles to follow her into the bathroom, so apparently she does think her bedroom is bugged. She leans against the counter and closes her eyes for a long minute. “Can you prove it?” she finally asks.

“Almost,” Stiles says.

“You need to get out of here,” she says.

“Yeah, I know. I’m working on it, trust me.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stiles waits while the hairdresser goes through a few more designs, playing on his phone. He’s cobbled together a list of all the alphas in and around Drake’s territory in the time frame that Pendleton became an alpha, and Mac is working on tracking down their current whereabouts. Chris says Vanessa’s getting on the next plane and she’s pissed off and he owes her a favor.

He’s thinking he might be able to escape for a little while after the hairdresser leaves, but Drake proclaims that they’re having an early dinner and gathers everyone around a bunch of tables downstairs. There are more people there this time, but Stiles isn’t surprised to find that he and Allison are at a table with Drake, Marty, and Wednesday.

“So you got attacked, huh?” Marty asks, sliding an arm around Wednesday’s waist as she sits down.

“Yeah, just a few rogue wolves,” Stiles says.

“At the hotel?” Marty asks.

“No, we were – ” Stiles stalls for him by taking a bite out of his chicken leg. He can’t say they were hanging out with the local pack. Or can he? Drake already knows. But Drake doesn’t know that Stiles knows that he knows. Stiles is starting to get a headache. “We were out hiking,” he adds.

“Some beautiful trails around here!” Drake says in that tone of cheer that he always uses. It’s starting to make Stiles want to punch him in the mouth. “It’s a shame that you guys can’t stay longer.”

Stiles tries to figure out what _that_ is supposed to mean. Is it a threat? Or is he just making conversation? “Maybe we’ll come back when the weather’s nicer.”

“Spring, that’s the best season in Kentucky!” Drake says. “That’s when the bluegrass comes in.”

“So did you kill them?” Marty asks. “We always decapitate our kills down here, to make it a sure thing.”

Allison gives him an exasperated look. “We’re at the dinner table.”

“Yeah, but come on, we’re hunters,” Marty says. “Don’t tell me that you’re squeamish.”

“There’s a difference between being squeamish and having manners,” Allison retorts.

Marty isn’t fazed. “Me and Lucy’s first few dates were on hunts,” he says. “This girl is a bona fide badass, you know. Too bad she has to do everything at a waddle these days.”

Allison scowls, but Wednesday just says, “The reason women get pregnant is because men couldn’t handle it.”

“Truth,” Stiles agrees. He takes a drink of his tea and nearly gags. ‘Sweet’ tea is much too sweet for him, but when he asked if there was any that wasn’t sweetened, even Wednesday had looked at him like he was from the moon. “I assume that they probably came here for Allison, but still, I have no idea how they found us.”

Drake smiles at him. “Oh, well, by scent I suppose. Probably tracked you that way.”

“Uh huh,” Stiles says. “Are you worried about party crashers? Like they get at the Conclave? All these hunters in one place at one time must be an awful temptation for some of the nasties in the area.”

“That’s why we’ve got all this security,” Drake says. “Anyone who tried to make a move would thoroughly regret it.”

The table has gone mostly silent except the two of them, and Stiles can feel the tension building under his spine like an electric wire. He feels like he’s stepping on thin ice, and he can hear it cracking beneath his feet. “I worry more about the hunters than the creatures. I think some people aren’t really thrilled with the way you’ve been gaining territory.”

“They don’t have to be happy with it,” Drake says. “It’s just business.”

“Somehow I feel like the way you do business is different from the rest of them.”

“Well, like I said, they don’t have to like it. But if they try to interfere with my son’s wedding because of a problem they have with me, they aren’t going to like the results of that, either.”

“Who wants dessert?” Wednesday asks, loudly.

“Not you,” Marty says, poking her in the ribs. “You’ve already put on twenty pounds.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that not a single pound of that is the fetus in my abdomen,” Wednesday says, rolling her eyes at him.

“I’m just saying, you might want to cut back on the calories,” Marty says.

“Hey, you know what?” Wednesday has lost her temper. “I hear that one of the things they have for dessert tonight is shut-the-fuckupcakes. Why don’t you have one of those and leave me the hell alone?” She pushes back her chair and stomps out of the room.

“Hoo, hormones are a bitch!” Marty says, chortling.

Stiles’ jaw sets and his own temper is coming dangerously close to slipping when his phone vibrates in his pocket. He’s able to look at it stealthily while Allison is delivering a blistering lecture on why Marty should stop being such a misogynistic asshole to his bride-to-be, or better yet, just in general. But the message is the opposite of reassuring. It’s from Scott, and just reads ‘Emergency! Need you!’

“I have to – ” Stiles says, standing up.

“Come on, dessert is being served,” Drake says. “Lucy’ll be okay, she just gets like that sometimes, you know – ”

“No, I have to go,” Stiles says.

“Where?” Marty asks.

“Wherever I want,” Stiles retorts, “unless I’m being held prisoner.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Drake says, holding his hands up in surrender. “Nobody is a prisoner, but don’t forget, there are rogue wolves out there. I couldn’t be responsible for someone being hurt, and you _did_ agree – ”

“No, actually, I didn’t.” Stiles is out of time and out of patience. “I can’t stay here tonight, Mr. Drake. Thanks for the hospitality and the offer, but I think it’d be better if we went back to the hotel.”

“And why is that?” Drake asks.

“Because I’m not Stanley Winchester,” Stiles says. What the hell, Drake already knows, so they’re really not losing anything. His cover will be officially blown instead of unofficially. “My name is Stiles Stilinski. I’m the alpha of the Beacon Hills pack, which I’m sure you heard of, and in fact it wouldn’t surprise me if you’d known that all along. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some business I need to attend to.”

Drake is on his feet. “And why should I let you walk out of here, after lying to me and trespassing on my territory?”

“It’s _not_ your territory,” Stiles says. “It’s Arnelle territory, at least for the next twenty-four hours. And I had every right to be here unless I stirred up trouble, attending a wedding as my friend’s plus-one.” He gestures to Allison. “But I didn’t stir up trouble, and still you sicced werewolves on me. So I think that unless you want me telling all the hunters about the fact that you have rogue wolves at your beck and call, you’re going to let me walk wherever I want.”

“The other hunters aren’t going to give half a damn what you think of me,” Drake says. “You’re the enemy.”

“Yeah, don’t forget something, Martin,” Stiles says. “A lot of the hunters that are coming hate my guts. But they also hate yours. So don’t push me. Because I _will_ push back, and then you’ll find out exactly how many enemies you have.”

He turns and walks out. Drake lets him go, but Derek is pressed tight to his back. Stiles shows them both Scott’s text as they walk so they’ll know why he just pulled the plug on their undercover operation. But he doesn’t call Scott until they’re back in the car, still mindful of the fact that their car is full of bugs. “What happened?” he asks, keeping the phone pressed tight to his ear.

“Sketch is gone,” Scott says, sounding a little panicked. “He found out about the baby and, and he freaked out. I think he thinks it’s his. We’ve been trying to call him but he’s not answering.”

“Shit,” Stiles snarls. “Did you track him?”

“Can’t! He stole Ray’s car.”

“Shit!” Stiles repeats. “Get the plate number. Call my dad, have him call the locals and put out an APB. Then pump Ray for information on where he might have gone. We have to find him before he does something stupid. Oh, and text me Sketch’s cell phone number.”

“On it,” Scott says, and hangs up.

“Stiles, we need to go,” Derek says, looking at the house.

Stiles doesn’t stop to question why Derek thinks that. He just turns the engine on and starts driving. He parks about a half mile away at a supermarket to see that Scott has texted him a phone number. He tries it, but like Scott had said, nobody answers. But it doesn’t go straight to voice mail. It’s turned on; Sketch is just ignoring their calls. “Okay. I need to get Sketch to take my call. Then we can try to track him by his GPS coordinates.” He chews on his lower lip for a minute, then texts, ‘Sketch, it’s Stiles. We need to talk.’

This gets no response, as he had expected, but he’s not done. He continues, ‘Yes, the baby is yours. Wednesday told me not to tell you.’

As expected, his phone rings twenty seconds later. “What the fuck do you _mean_ , she told you not to – that’s my fucking kid, I’ve got every right to – ” Sketch dissolves into furious sputtering.

Stiles interrupts. “Sketch, where are you?”

“Fuck you!” Sketch replies, and hangs up.

Allison already has the GPS tracking website pulled up. She looks at Stiles and says, “I don’t suppose you have his username and password.”

“The newer phones, the username is just the phone number these days,” Stiles says, “and I’m wondering if I do know his password.”

“Lucy?” Derek asks, as Stiles leans over and types. “Isn’t that a bit obvious?”

“It’s Lucy-Loo,” Stiles says, as the computer dings to indicate it’s accepted the password. “His nickname for her. Actually not a half bad password. It’s got two capital letters and a symbol. And if you didn’t know he calls her that, you would never guess it.”

“Wherever he is, he’s not on the move, that’s good,” Allison says, plugging the coordinates the website gave her into her phone to get directions. “And he’s not close, so he’s not sitting outside the Drake manor plotting how to rescue his damsel in distress. Also good.”

Stiles nods and starts driving again. The coordinates take them into a run down area on the edge of town, to an old trailer park. They have to park and get out to walk the last half mile, to find Sketch sitting on a rock wall underneath a huge oak tree. He scowls at them when they walk up, but then just slumps, defeated.

“I got halfway there,” he says, “then started thinking about what Lucy would fucking _do_ to me if I turned up. I like my nuts where they are, so I just . . . came here. S’where I grew up.”

Stiles sits down on the rock wall next to him, and Allison sits on Stiles’ other side. Derek leans against the tree.

“When Lucy showed up at the den saying, you know, ‘I come in peace’, none of us really knew what to do with it,” Sketch finally says. “She said that she had been talking to you and you had given her the idea that a long-term alliance might help out. That she knew not all werewolves were bad and she just wanted what was best for the innocents on her land. We wanted that, too, and hell, we was thrilled at the idea of not having to jump every time we smelled a hunter.

“So Lucy, she . . .” Sketch cracks a smile. “She says that she would be willing to date one of the pack, you know, see if it worked out. And she gave Ray this list of _criteria_. Not _any_ werewolf would be good enough for her. She wanted someone her age or older, she wanted someone who was still in school like her, wanted someone who had been turned with consent, you know, on and on.

“I didn’t meet a single God damned thing on that list except being a nonsmoker, but I wanted to date her so bad. I had this enormous crush on her from the minute she turned up. So I took up smoking, crossed off everything on the list, and showed up at her house with flowers.”

“What happened?” Allison asks, grinning.

“She threw the flowers in my face,” Sketch says, grinning back, “and told me to fuck off.”

“Sounds like the beginning to a great relationship,” Stiles says, laughing despite himself.

“Two days later I called her up and told her I’d quit smoking, and asked if she wanted to go on a date with me. She told me I was a moron, then texted me a date, time, and address. We went mini-golfing, and she whupped my ass, and I just . . .” Sketch rakes both his hands through his hair. “Is the baby really mine?”

“What do you think?” Allison asks, shooting Stiles a look.

“I think that your pal Scott said she was pregnant, and Ray asked if she’d still be able to fight if it came down to that. Scott said yeah, from what he knew she was about six months along.” Sketch’s hands clench and relax, his claws flexing. “But she weren’t sleeping with that jackass six months ago. I know that because she was still sleeping with me. She promised me that if she had to start fucking him, she’d tell me. And she did. About four months ago, when I stopped seeing her, she said things were getting serious, they were having sex, and she had to stop seeing me. She wouldn’t lie to me. Lucy never fuckin’ lied to me. So if she’s really six months pregnant, that baby is mine.”

Stiles is quiet for a minute, then says, “Yeah. She asked me not to tell you because she was afraid you would do something rash and get yourself killed. She didn’t want to be responsible for that.”

“We was really careful, though!” Sketch protests. “She was on the pill!”

“The pill isn’t one hundred percent effective,” Stiles tells him. “Other medications, like antibiotics, can mess with it. I guess that’s what happened to her.”

“Shit.” Sketch droops. “Shit, I’m gonna be a dad. I ain’t sure I’m ready for that.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I can promise that you’re going to be ten times the dad that Marty Drake would be,” Allison says.

“I’m surprised Wednesday didn’t know that about the antibiotics, if we’re going to be honest,” Derek remarks.

“To quote Wednesday, ‘fucking Kentucky sex ed’,” Stiles says, and Derek gives a little snort. “You know what else Wednesday said, Sketch?” he adds. “That everything she’s done in the last six months has been for this baby. She is so God damned in love with you and she is willing to sacrifice _everything_ to protect this child. And we’re _going_ to help her. But we aren’t going to get anywhere running around like chickens with our heads cut off.”

Sketch nods and sighs. “All right,” he says. “What are we gonna do?”

“Well, at the moment,” Stiles says, “we need to get back to our hotel room. We need to talk about how we’re going to crash the wedding tomorrow, so Drake can hear us, so he can make plans to stop us, so then we know where his guys will be. And then we’re going to scrape together every shred of evidence we have to prove with an enormous piece of shit he is. I’m going to make a fucking slideshow. How many heroes do you think save the day with power point?”

“Y’all are weird,” Sketch says, but he’s smiling.

“But first,” Stiles says, standing up, “we need to go by a kitchen store.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little short, sorry. I couldn't resist the ending. I'll make it up to you, I promise. <3

 

Stiles and Allison spend twenty minutes getting in a spirited discussion at their hotel room of the best way to gain entrance to the wedding. Allison is invited, of course, and she plans on going through the front whether Drake likes it or not. Stiles talks some about the security measures he’s seen, and makes sure to make one or two errors. After some ‘discussion’, they agree the easiest thing to do would be to smuggle Stiles in in the trunk of their car.

This is a plan that Stiles would never agree to in real life, but the incident with him and the trunk of Peter Hale’s car was never made public, so Drake has no way of knowing that. They’ve already talked about their real plan for entering, but there are still a few things he hasn’t decided on. Primarily, he isn’t sure whether or not they’ll be able to get into the house proper without attracting attention. He’s sure that the back will be locked up.

He’s still mulling that over when there’s a knock on the hotel room door. Puzzled, he walks over and looks through the peephole. Wednesday’s younger sister is standing there, looking nervous. Stiles considers not opening the door, because he has no idea what she’ll say, and he doesn’t know what Drake will do if he hears about it. But she knocks again, so he pulls it open.

Izzy looks up at him and says, straight-faced, “Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?”

“Wow, you guys go door-to-door everywhere,” Stiles says, laughing. “Uh, no, thanks. I’m not from around these parts.”

“Okay, bye,” Izzy says, and turns and walks away. Stiles follows her, letting the hotel door close behind him. She walks to the stairwell and goes through the door, then seems to relax once the door is shut behind her.

“Izzy, what are you doing here?” Stiles asks.

“Did Martin Drake kill my parents?” she asks.

Stiles sighs. “Probably, yes,” he says. “I’m still working on proving it, but I’m pretty sure he was directly responsible even though he’s not the one who actually pulled the metaphorical trigger.”

“Then I want to help you,” Izzy says.

Stiles is about to tell her that Wednesday will gut him if he gets her younger siblings involved, but then realized that Izzy could provide some much needed help. Due to her age, nobody will be suspicious of her. She can unlock the back door for them, and she can get a weapon to Wednesday, too. “Okay. But we can’t talk about it here.”

“I know,” Izzy says. “He put bugs in our house, too. Months ago. He told Grandma that if she tried to do anything, he’d know, and he’d – come after the little ones.” Her face screws up in an effort not to cry. “I wanted to fight anyway, but Grandma told me that there was nothing we could do.”

“Well, Lucy called me here to fix this problem she’s having,” Stiles says. “So come with me and I’ll explain everything, okay?”

Izzy nods. “Okay.”

It takes about half an hour to get Izzy up to date, although Stiles skims over some of the particulars. Izzy is more than willing to help them get into the Drake manor and help her sister, and they nail out all their plans around Ray’s kitchen table while they eat pizza.

“You said he had bugs in your house, right?” Stiles asks, and Izzy nods. “So theoretically, that conversation he had with your grandmother the other day got recorded.” He stands up. “Okay, we need to get that recording. If we’re lucky, it’s a local receiver that he only changes out periodically. He’s a busy man, after all. Let’s go find it.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

It’s looking like it’s going to be another sleepless night at Ray Parr’s den. Stiles is wracking his brain, he’s gone over every piece of evidence what feels like a hundred times. He’s startled out of his daze when his phone rings, playing Hawaii 5-O. He picks it up and says, “Yo, Dad, what’s up?”

“Well, I stumbled on something interesting,” Tom says. “You know that body that was found in the woods, the one that the Arnelle couple went to investigate before they were killed?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, not feeling very hopeful.

“I had requested the case file, like you asked, sent it over, like you asked, didn’t think much more about it,” Tom says. “But then this afternoon, a detective from Jacksonville called me. He wanted to know why I had requested it. So I told him the truth, that a couple had been killed nearby, it was still unsolved, but I was grasping at any straw I could find.”

“Okay,” Stiles says.

“He actually got kind of excited,” Tom says. “Turns out that he never believed that the guy who was convicted – ” There’s a moment of shuffling papers. “Trevor Hughes – was actually guilty.”

Stiles frowns and sits up. “But he was convicted on solid evidence,” he says.

“Yep,” Tom says. “That’s what the detective said. Said that after the DNA evidence came in, he had no choice but to arrest him and watch him get charged. But he still believed Hughes was innocent. He thought the DNA was planted. Nobody could figure out why Hughes would have driven all the way up to Kentucky to dump the body. He had an alibi, too.”

“Yeah, I saw that in the file, but ‘out drinking with friends’ is a pretty soft alibi when confronted with, you know, DNA,” Stiles says. He had wondered about the location of the body himself, but hadn’t thought much about it after seeing the conviction. “It was blood, right? And I assume that Hughes would have said something if someone had stolen his blood.”

“True,” Tom says. “But he donated blood once every few months.”

“Huh. Hang on.” Stiles gets on his laptop and employs several minutes of Google. “I don’t know if it would matter. Donor DNA doesn’t really last very long once it’s transfused. I assume someone checked to make sure that nobody had broken into a blood bank and stolen blood?” he asks, and Tom confirms. “I don’t know, Dad. If his blood had showed up at a random crime scene, that would be one thing. But this was a guy he knew. What are the odds that he would have been killed by some random guy who happened to have Hughes’ blood?”

Tom sighs. “I have to admit it’s unlikely. But you’re the one who kept saying that you felt like he _had_ to have lured the Arnelles out somehow. This is the most likely point of control. This is how to get them into a certain place at a certain time. It’s got to be your connection. And the detective really wanted to find a way to prove his innocence, even now that he’s dead. I did a little research on this guy, and I’d be the last person to say that a good man can’t be driven to murder, but he really didn’t seem the type to kill his business partner over an argument about money. This was a guy who volunteered at homeless shelters, founded a nonprofit, donated bone marrow, ran for city council on a platform of – ”

“Wait, what?” Stiles feels a sudden jolt of energy. “He donated bone marrow? Are you _sure_?”

“Yeah. There was an article about it; he was an athlete and had to give up some competition he had been training for in order to do it. Why?”

“Because Martin Drake had fucking leukemia.” Stiles is scrambling for a pen and paper and he doesn’t know what he’s going to write down. “He had fucking _leukemia_. He went into remission after a bone marrow transplant.”

“Stiles, I’m not sure – ”

“Bone marrow recipients are chimeras!” Stiles says, so excited now that every wolf in the house is gathering to see what he’s shouting about. “Their blood has different DNA! It has the DNA of their donor! Oh my God! Martin Drake killed Hughes’ partner and deliberately planted _his own blood_ there in order to frame Hughes!”

“Jesus Christ,” Tom says. “That’s – I hate to use the word ‘diabolical’ but if the shoe fits – ”

“I have to go!” Stiles says frantically. “I have to hack into, into, I don’t know! Wherever they keep bone marrow donor information! I have to prove that Drake knew who his donor was. I have to – I have to go, I’ll talk to you later, love you bye!” he says, and practically drops the phone.

Mac is already typing. “There are four major bone marrow banks in the United States,” she says. “But . . .” Her typing speeds up, slows down, speeds up. She scans the screen for information. “But only one of those existed at the time that Drake had leukemia. So it’s got to be that one. Give me a few hours and I can – how about some coffee?”

“On it,” Erica says. “I’ll make a Starbucks run.”

“I’ll go with you,” Scott says.

“Jesus, if we can prove this,” Derek says softly. “He framed the man who saved his life. Even the worst hunter will side with us after that.”

“Oh, we’re going to prove it,” Stiles says. “And then they’ll believe us about everything else.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Dawn is approaching, and Stiles is elbow deep in the murder case file, when his phone rings. He glances down and sees that it’s Chris. He picks up and says, “Stilinski Burlesque; you got the dough, we got the show.”

“What I have is a problem,” Chris says.

“Oh geez,” Stiles says. “What happened?”

There’s a marked pause and then Chris says, carefully, “I might have gone overboard.”

Stiles grins despite himself. “Yeah?”

“There are _kids_ here, Stiles,” Chris says, anger seeping into his tone. “ _Children_. You didn’t tell me there were children here.”

“Did I not think to mention that?” Stiles says innocently, and Chris makes a disgruntled noise. “Okay. How bad is it?”

“Well. It’s not too bad. I have all of Drake’s men in custody. I’ve brought the children together and organized sort of a, a playpen for them. The adults are still where they started, although I’ve assured them that I’m going to personally investigate what happened and why they were captured, so they settled down a bit.”

“That sounds more like the opposite of a problem,” Stiles says.

“Unless Drake finds out.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Stiles says. “I made sure he couldn’t receive any incoming calls overnight, and now you’ve got all his men taken care of. Can you make it back here in time for the wedding?”

There’s a pause and some muffled conversation in the background. “Yeah. Sam says he’ll stay here with the kids, make sure none of Drake’s men cause any trouble.”

Stiles takes a moment to mentally savor the image of Beefcake McAbcrunch getting overrun with werewolf toddlers. It’s adorable. He hopes that the prison has cameras. “Okay. I’ll see you in a few hours, then.”

“Stiles,” Chris says, “I’m not happy about this.”

“Why?” Stiles asks, blank. Chris had done a good thing, rescued kids, put away bad guys. It was the kind of stuff that Chris does. He’s still sitting there, confused, while Chris says nothing, when Derek lets out a sigh. He walks over and takes the phone out of Stiles’ hand.

“Chris, it’s Derek,” he says, and there’s a pause. “Yeah. I’ll talk to him, okay?” Another pause, and Stiles hates that he can’t hear the other end of the conversation, the way Derek can. “Okay. See you soon.” Derek hangs up and hands the phone back.

“What?” Stiles says, disgruntled.

“You manipulated him, Stiles,” Derek says patiently. Several other pack members look up and then hastily away. Allison’s jaw trembles, and Scott reaches out to squeeze her forearm. “I know you didn’t mean to. I know that you thought he would understand what you wanted him to do. But you withheld information from him to provoke a specific reaction. Six months ago, Chris would have brushed that off as you being you. But . . . after what Sally did to him . . .”

“Oh, Jesus,” Stiles says. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know that. So does he.” Derek shakes his head a little. “You wanted the facility secure because that’s what was safest for everyone. You wanted the kids to be rescued. But why didn’t you just tell him that?”

“Because I thought . . .” Stiles sighs. “I thought if I told him right away, he might go confront Drake and spoil the plan, because I knew he was, you know, sensitive about that kind of thing. And after what happened last autumn, I can’t always gauge how he’ll react to things anymore. He’s been getting, you know, aggressive at weird times.”

“So instead of trusting him to work with you and make a rational decision together, you manipulated him into doing what you wanted.” Derek’s quiet for a minute. “I’m not saying this to hurt you. It’s a part of who you are. You read people and you know how to get the reactions you want out of them. You’ve been doing it with Drake all week, and with Wednesday, too, to a lesser extent. And you’ve done it with Chris in the past – just put him in situations where you know what he’ll do because you rely on Chris to be a certain way. And I think that used to be okay because Chris knows you, because Chris trusts you. But you can’t do that to him anymore, Stiles.”

“Okay.” Stiles nods. “I didn’t think of it that way, but that, that’s not an excuse. I’ll apologize when I see him.”

Derek squeezes his shoulder. “Come on,” he says. “We still have a lot of work to do.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Everything goes basically according to plan for once. Drake has two guys checking people over as they enter, and Chris and Allison’s car gets stopped. Drake himself is there to supervise, as his guys pat Chris down and Chris rolls his eyes and makes annoyed comments. Allison gets a pat down, too, but they’re nervous about groping an attractive twenty-one year old under her father’s watchful glower, so they miss the knife she’s tucked into her cleavage and the one strapped to her inner thigh. Their metal detectors don’t catch it either, because it’s ceramic. Stiles has been using ceramic knives for cooking lately and loves them. Allison has been practicing with it and complaining about the balance all night.

Once that’s over with, Drake makes a few comments about what else might be in their car, Allison pretends to get nervous, Chris starts to get pissed off. Drake dramatically opens the trunk, only to reveal empty space. He looks around and for the first time, appears somewhat off balance. Chris says, “Are you finished?” and Drake grudgingly allows them through.

The best part of all this drama is that it’s easy for Izzy to slip in while it’s happening. She just walks past the two guards who are busy with Chris and Allison and heads up to the house. The man at the front entrance of the house asks for her invitation, and she gives him the one Stiles had received, since he won’t be needing it.

Once she texts Stiles to let him know that she’s made it inside, they put phase two into operation. The rest of the pack, along with Ray Parr, has been waiting out back, behind the enormous hedges that shield the backyard from any neighbors. There isn’t a lot of cover, but superior werewolf hearing makes it easy enough to avoid the guys that Drake has patrolling.

Squirming through the hedges is going to take effort, and the backyard is crawling with Drake’s men, who are all there to discourage that exact event. But Stiles isn’t worried. Stiles has a plan.

His plan is Erica.

She wiggles through the hedge, waits until there are no guards nearby, and then goes the rest of the way through. She’s wearing a blue sequined dress that barely covers the essentials, and one of the straps is artlessly falling down. She’s also holding an empty champagne glass, and lets out a trill giggle as she stumbles to the ground.

It’s an interesting fact, Stiles has found, that when you want to avoid attention, one of the best things to do is draw attention. No one trying to sneak in would do it in heels and a sequined dress. They wouldn’t be giggling and stumbling. So it never occurs to the guards for an instant that Erica is anything but an already-inebriated wedding guest who somehow got past them and started wandering the backyard.

“Miss, you can’t be out here,” one of the men says in a firm tone.

“Oh, Lord, I think I’m already drunk,” Erica giggles, leaning on him. “Help me with the . . .” she gestures vaguely at where the buckle on one of her shoes has come undone.

“Uh . . .” the man says.

“Just hang onto me for a minute,” Erica says, letting her weight fall against him, incidentally digging her hip into his groin. He flushes and looks away. “There, I got it,” she says, straightening back up and nearly falling back the other way. “Whoops!” she declares, as one of the other men catches her and the strap of her dress falls even further down. She’s one more stumble away from flashing everyone, and suddenly every guard in the entire yard is coming over to see whether or not that’s going to happen.

Given that, it’s beyond easy for the rest of the pack to slip through the hedge and duck through the yard and through the back door that Izzy has unlocked for them. There are plenty of people milling around by a table full of champagne glasses and hors d’oeuvres, but they see their formal clothing and assume they’re wedding guests. Derek picks a twig out of Stiles’ hair as one of the guards escorts Erica back into the house.

“Oh, there you are,” Derek says, accepting her arm. She giggles and pats his chest flirtatiously. “Sorry,” he says to the guard. “She’s such a lightweight.”

“No problem at _all_ ,” the guard says, coming close to a leer.

“Okay, we’re good to go,” Stiles says, after he walks away. “You guys take your positions. I have to go have a quick chat with the priest.”

The priest is easy to find, in the little dressing room next to the glassed in porch, and he’s very amenable to letting Stiles say something before he starts talking. Or at least, Stiles brought enough hundred dollar bills to make him amenable. He’ll be quick, he promises. He just wants to make a quick announcement. The priest clearly thinks he’s about to start selling Amway Products, but doesn’t care enough to argue with him.

Stiles slips into the closet when someone comes to let the priest know that it’s time to go. Then he waits. He can’t go out until the last second. He hears the murmur of noise die down, and the familiar chorus of ‘Here Comes the Bride’, which he’s very sure must annoy Wednesday. It’s not her type of song.

The music stops and Stiles steps out, steps up behind the priest, and then steps in front of them.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, with a broad smile, “we are gathered here today for the trial of Martin Drake, for the murders of Betty and Curtis Arnelle.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be one of my favorite TSOIP climaxes. ^_^
> 
> It does get a little bloody, though, just so you're warned.

Everyone is so surprised at Stiles’ entrance that there’s a moment of silence for Stiles to scan the crowd and see what his ally to enemy ratio is. It could be worse. Thanks to the hunter app, he knows a lot of the hunters’ faces now, so he recognizes a fair number of people. He sees Julien and his wife, Mikael and his family. He also sees Stella Jones, Vanessa Nazario, and Hannah Winchester.

To his relief, he doesn’t see Agnes St. James. To his discomfiture, he _does_ see Sally Stoddard, sitting with her father and uncle. She’s dressed in a periwinkle blue dress, and as soon as their gazes meet, her eyes light up. A broad smile touches her face, which looks very much to Stiles like she’s excited to see what he’s about to do.

Then the moment is over. Martin Drake is on his feet. “Funny, kid,” he says, in his usual unconcerned tone. “But you weren’t invited, so – ”

“What does he mean?” Wednesday’s voice is tight and unhappy. Stiles hasn’t talked to her about this, but she immediately intuits what role she’s supposed to play. Drake will try to shut it down, and as the actual bride, she’s got the authority to keep things moving along, at least for a minute.

“Lucy, sugar, he’s just tryin’ to upset you on your special day,” Drake says.

“No, actually, you really did murder her parents,” Stiles says. Some of the other hunters are getting to their feet now, and the noise level is rising. “Have a seat, everybody, please! I promise that I’ll explain.”

“Why the hell should we believe anything you say?” Stella shouts.

“Hey, Stella!” Stiles greets her. “Remember the last time we met, when I told you the truth about absolutely everything, and you still tried to have me killed? Yeah, me too, so why don’t you sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up?”

Stella’s face twists in rage, but before she can say anything else, another woman says, “What do you mean, he murdered the Arnelles? They were killed by a werewolf!”

“Yes, indeed they were!” Stiles says. “A werewolf hired by Martin Drake.”

“Okay, we need to get this guy out of here,” Drake says, gesturing to one of the men standing by the edge of the room.

“I don’t think so.” Julien’s on his feet now, politely but firmly blocking the man’s way. “Curtis Arnelle was a friend of mine, and I’d like to hear what Stiles has to say.”

“Come on, guys, this is ridiculous, he’s just trying to stir shit up – ”

“Mr. Drake, the Arnelle territory will be the third that you’ve taken control of in the last fifteen years,” Stiles says. “Things like that don’t happen by accident. Stojanovic, Argent, Arnelle. As my father, an excellent detective, would say – once is chance, twice is coincidence, and three times is conspiracy. I believe I can land as many as two hundred deaths at your door – over fifty of which are fellow hunters. Now, who here wants to hear what I have to say?”

“I do,” Mikael says.

Vanessa’s eyes are narrowed, but she says, “I’d like to, as well.”

“You can’t be serious,” Drake tries again.

“Then ladies and gentlemen, I call my first witness: Dragan Stojanovic.”

This generates some surprise, but it’s very purposeful on Stiles’ part. He wants to make it clear that an old, respected hunter is cooperating with him. Dragan can’t even really say anything that proves Drake’s guilt, but Stiles wants to have him up there anyway. Drake is still talking, but Chris and Julien have forced him back into his seat. Wednesday and Marty are standing at the head of the aisle, both of them looking a little uncertain. Allison walks up, bringing her chair with her, so Wednesday can sit down. She gives Stiles a little nod, to indicate that the rest of the pack is in position around the room. They’ll make sure that Drake can’t call in more troops.

Dragan had been invited to the wedding, so he hadn’t had any trouble getting in, but it’s clear that Drake isn’t happy to see him. He walks up from his seat with a little trouble, leaning on the arm of his grandson. But he speaks on his own, rather than having the younger man translate for him.

“Martin Drake was one of your family’s lieutenants, is that correct?” Stiles asks.

“Yes,” Dragan says.

“Can you give us a brief description of what happened the night your family was killed?” Stiles asks. He doesn’t want to push Dragan, because these people respect him, despite what had happened at the Conclave. Dragan nods and does so, in a few short sentences. “So it seems to me that the ogres probably had some prior knowledge of your residence.”

“It does seem likely.”

“And it’s very convenient that they attacked when your electronic security system was down. Would that have stopped an ogre?”

“No,” Dragan says, “but it would have sent an emergency signal out to all our lieutenants who lived nearby.”

Stiles nods. “Did Martin Drake know that the system was down?”

“Yes, he had been there helping my son with it earlier that day.”

Drake blusters again. “All the lieutenants knew. That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Don’t get excited, Martin,” Stiles says. “I’m just getting started.” Back to Dragan, he says, “What happened to the ogres after their attack?”

“Drake killed them.”

“Before anyone could talk to them, I presume.”

“Objection!” Drake says. “He’s leading the witness.”

Stiles turns and gives him an amused look. “Martin, this isn’t actually a courtroom. I don’t _actually_ have to conform to the rules of evidence, and I’m allowed to lead a witness any way I damned well please. I can’t prove you killed the Stojanovic family and I know it. I just want to give the, shall we say, jury, a brief idea of how many convenient factors played into their deaths.”

Drake is sputtering, and Chris squeezes his shoulder a little more tightly than looks comfortable.

“After your family was killed, it would have been your decision what happened to the territory,” Stiles continues. “Did you ask Martin to take over?”

“No,” Dragan says. “The territory was to be divided. But Martin had already talked to all the backers and to the other lieutenants. He seemed to have things well in hand, and truthfully I did not much care what happened after I left for Europe.”

“Thank you, Mr. Stojanovic,” Stiles says. “You can go back to your seat.” He turns to face the audience while Dragan does so. “So that’s one territory that Martin Drake took over without asking for permission. Okay. He’s an ambitious guy. No problem; we’ve all got a little Slytherin in us.” He sees Derek crack a smile from his place at the back of the room. “Of course, he also took over Henry and Rose Argent’s territory after they disappeared last year. What happened to them? Nobody knows.” He glances briefly at Sally and sees a smile curve at her lips. He can’t pin anything about the Argents on Drake, and he’s not about to try to explain what really happened to them. “However, there are some things we do know about that. Therefore, I would like to call Julien Argent to the metaphorical stand.”

Julien frowns at him, but walks up to stand at the front of the church. “Yes?” he asks, warily.

“How well did you know your cousin’s backers, Julien?”

Julien gives a half shrug. “I’d met them a few times, but I didn’t know them well.”

“The Midwestern territory was the original Argent territory, was it not?”

“Yes,” Julien says. “My great-grandmother settled there after emigrating from France.”

“Would you say it’s likely that all Henry’s backers knew that, should the worst happen to him, you and Chris would like to keep that territory in the family?”

“Yes, I think they should have known that.”

“So the fact that they immediately defected over to Drake before Henry had been missing for more than a week, does that give you an impression that he might have laid some groundwork there?”

Julien’s jaw tightens as he sees what Stiles is getting at. “It seems like he might have been talking to them, yes.”

“Come on, now,” Drake says, trying to laugh this off. “I was working with Henry a lot; our territories were right next to each other. Of course I talked to his backers occasionally. That doesn’t mean I had anything to do with what happened to him.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Stiles says. “So let’s move on to what I _can_ prove. You may step down, Julien.”

Julien gives his head a little shake at Stiles’ melodrama, but goes back to stand next to his cousin, bracketing Drake in case he gets more ideas about trying to escape.

“Here’s what we know about the deaths of Betty and Curtis Arnelle,” Stiles says to his by-now-captive audience. “There was a rogue alpha werewolf in town. He killed them. It’s not much of a story. Didn’t raise any eyebrows. So let’s be a little more specific about it, shall we? I call Raymond Parr to the stand.”

Ray saunters up in his shabby tuxedo from where he had been blending in with the other wedding guests. His eyes flare briefly red as if to introduce himself, and this causes a stir. “What is that _thing_ doing here?” Stella spits out.

“This _thing_ has been living in peace with the Arnelles for years, so watch your mouth,” Ray shoots right back.

“Ray is the local alpha,” Stiles says, “but only for the past six years. So, Ray, in your own words, tell us what happened when John Patterson came to town.”

Ray nods and does. He talks a little about his previous alpha, Shoshana, and how they had been a family. There’s some eye-rolling from a few of the hunters, but no active disparagement. To be fair, every hunter understands and respects the way a pack is bonded. It can make werewolves easier to kill, so they don’t argue with it. Then Ray tells everyone about his first meeting with Patterson, how he had killed Shoshana and started killing off pack members. He talks about going to the Arnelles for help, and the silver nitrate, and finally, bringing Patterson’s head to Lucy.

Stiles pulls up a photograph on his phone and shows it to Ray. “Is this the man you’re talking about?” he asks.

Ray looks at it and nods. “Yeah. That’s John Patterson.”

“Thank you, Mr. Parr, you may step down.” Stiles glances around. “Mr. James Stoddard, would you please step up?”

This is the first time he thinks he’s actually spoken to Stoddard other than a brief introduction at the Conclave. He’s a large man, well over six feet, with broad shoulders and a lot of muscle. His hair is kept short, and he has a somewhat impressive beard. He looks suspicious but not overtly hostile as he walks up. Stiles glances at Sally again and sees the quizzical expression on her face.

“Mr. Stoddard, are you acquainted with a hunter named Jesse Pendleton?” he asks.

This question obviously isn’t what anybody expected. “Yeah, I worked with him in the past,” Stoddard says.

Stiles displays the same picture. “Is this him?”

Surprise and understanding dawns on Stoddard’s face. “Yes. That’s Jesse.”

“He disappeared six years ago, did he not?”

“Yes, he did,” Stoddard says.

“Thank you very much, you may step down.” Stiles turns and faces the audience with a smile. “John Patterson was a fake name. He was a hunter named Jesse Pendleton. Originally from Pennsylvania, like Martin Drake. Went to college in Philadelphia, like Martin Drake. And then worked together with Martin Drake to murder Curtis and Betty Arnelle.”

“That – that’s _purely_ circumstantial – ” Drake protests.

“Keep your shirt on, Martin, I’m getting there,” Stiles says. “I call Isabella Arnelle.”

Wednesday’s younger sister looks shy and uncertain as she makes her way to the front of the church. She looks nervously at Drake and then away.

“Miss Arnelle, when did you first make the acquaintance of Martin Drake?”

“A few months ago,” Izzy says. Her voice wavers, but then becomes firm. “He started coming to our house after Lucy started dating Marty. He said he wanted to make sure that, that our families could live in peace.”

“How do you mean?” Stiles asks.

“He didn’t want – Grandma to interfere,” she says. “He said that as long as Lucy played ball, everything would be okay.”

“What else did he do?”

Izzy knows where he’s going with it, so she gets to the point. “He put listening devices in our house. To make sure she didn’t tell anyone.”

“That is a baseless accusation,” Drake says.

“And when was the last time you saw Martin Drake?”

“Three days ago. He came to the house to talk to Grandma. He said that you were sniffing around and that she had to tell you to back off.”

“Or else what?”

 Izzy shrugs. “He didn’t say. He never really said.”

“Thank you, Izzy, you can go sit down now.” Stiles turns again and says, “Izzy, being a brave young woman and a true hunter, brought me one of these listening devices.” He holds it up while Drake sputters. “Short range. They have to have a receiver. So we went looking for it. And then we found the conversation that Izzy was just referring to.” Without waiting, he hits play on his phone.

Drake’s voice comes out loud and clear. “So that Stilinski kid,” he says. “Seems he’s gotten some idea in his head about how maybe I had something to do with Betty and Curtis’ deaths.”

“Uh huh,” Mabel says. She sounds tired.

“If he comes to ask you questions about it, I sure hope you won’t encourage him,” Drake says. “I don’t want anything to ruin this wedding. Lucy has been looking forward to it so much, it’s her special day, you know what I’m saying?”

A moment of silence.

“I just think that the alliance between our families is going to do so much good,” Drake says. “I mean, Betty and Curtis dying, that was horrible, but that’s what happens when the packs get out of control. Once we get things whipped up into shape around here, people will be safe. These kids are going to be great hunters someday, Mabel. I’d sure hate to see what happened to Betty and Curtis happen to anyone else. Especially these beautiful grandkids of yours.”

There’s a gasp of shock from the audience, and Martin starts to protest. “That – that’s out of context, you can’t take that to mean – ”

At the same time, Wednesday has launched from her chair. “You son of a _bitch_!” she snarls. “If you touch any of those kids I will bury you, you filthy, disgusting piece of shit – ”

Marty grabs her before she can actually launch herself at his father. “Whoa, Lucy – ”

“Get your fucking hands off me!” Wednesday says, twisting around and out of his grip. “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again!”

Marty backs off, hands held up in surrender.

“You’re putting words in my mouth!” Drake protests. “All I meant was that I was worried that Lucy wouldn’t be able to get the territory under control without my help, and that people would suffer for it.”

“Oh, I’ll believe that’s what you meant,” Stiles says. “After all, you’re the one who’s capturing werewolves and then sending them down here to step all over her borders and assassinate her people. I call Chris Argent.”

Chris scowls at him, because his hatred of public speaking is well known, and he doesn’t move from where he’s standing behind Drake. “The prison?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and Chris starts talking about the prison he had visited the previous night and its inhabitants.

As usual, he’s thorough but concise. He mentions the children, displays pictures on his cell phone. “Sam is still there and has been going through their records all morning,” he continues. “We’ve found numerous examples of werewolves who have been held captive there but then released. With the help of my son Jake, we’ve been matching those release dates to attacks on Arnelle territory and deaths of nearby hunters. We’ve found eighteen so far, over the past five years. My guess is that we’ll find more.” He looks back to Stiles to indicate that he’s done.

There are low murmurs from the audience. Drake is sputtering protests. Lucy is white with rage, and to be honest, Stiles wants to keep her that way. “Last but not least,” he says. “I call Lucy Arnelle.”

Wednesday has to take a deep breath before she can speak. “What?”

 “Six years ago, your parents went out on a hunt. What were they trying to track down?”

Frowning, Wednesday says, “More of an investigation than a hunt. There had been a dead body found in the woods down south of here; they thought it might be werewolf related.”

“Right.” Stiles turns back to the audience. “I have the case file right here,” he says, holding up his phone. “The victim was Herman Grant, from Jacksonville, Florida. The police apprehended his business partner, Trevor Hughes, in connection with the murder. Trevor’s DNA was found at the scene. Open and shut case. Cops love cases like this. Except one cop didn’t like the case, and that was the cop who actually arrested him. Despite the rock solid evidence, he was convinced that Trevor was innocent. And I can see why. Trevor Hughes was a pillar of the community. Local charity work, involved in the community, loving wife, two kids. This guy had never hurt a fly. So why would he suddenly kill a man, a friend, over a small dispute, then lug his body two states away to leave it to rot in a forest?”

There’s silence now, and for the first time, Drake is still. Stiles enjoys the look on his face. He’s caught and he knows it, and his reptilian brain is working feverishly to find a way out of it.

“You know what else Trevor Hughes did?” Stiles asks, drawing it out. “He donated bone marrow. Specifically, he donated bone marrow through a foundation that worked to find matches among strangers, since bone marrow is notoriously difficult to match. Trevor actually gave up his athletic career for the arduous, week-long process, to donate bone marrow to a young college student at Temple University. And that student was Martin Drake.”

Everyone immediately stares at Drake. Even Wednesday is standing there with her jaw ajar.

“Funny thing about bone marrow,” Stiles continues casually, “is that it alters your DNA. Bone marrow is what produces your blood cells. So after you get a bone marrow transplant, for the rest of your life, the DNA of your blood won’t be yours. It will be that of your donor.”

You could hear a pin drop in the church. Stiles turns to Drake and lowers the boom. “I submit to you that Martin Drake did willingly, knowingly, and with malice aforethought murder Herman Grant and plant his own blood at the scene to frame Trevor Hughes, knowing that the DNA evidence would all but guarantee a conviction. And then he brought the body up to the Arnelles’ backyard and left it in the forest, so when they went to investigate, he could arrange an ambush. His good friend Jesse Pendleton, who had just recently become an alpha – undoubtedly through the torture and subsequent murder of an alpha werewolf – did the dirty work. And Drake reaped the benefits.

“But it wasn’t quite as good as you thought it would be, was it?” Stiles continues. “You knew you couldn’t snatch the territory up right away. You knew that after what happened to the Stojanovics, everyone would be suspicious. No problem, you thought. Leave it to a blind old woman and her thirteen-year-old orphaned granddaughter. The territory would fall apart on its own, and you would sweep in and become the hero. Only what you didn’t count on was that the thirteen-year-old orphan was a bouncing baby badass. Lucy kept things together so well that you had no choice but to start funneling werewolves off your own territory and aiming them at her. And then when she finally, begrudgingly, went to you for help, you immediately went behind her back and stole her backers, just like you did to Henry Argent. You told her that if she married Marty, then she could keep the territory. Only you never really intended to let her keep it. You figured, give her two or three years to pop out some kids for Marty, and then you could quietly take care of her. But that’s a story for another time, now, isn’t it?” He turns to the audience, smiles and spreads his hands. “Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.”

There’s another moment of silence, and then Hannah Winchester says, “Can you prove this?”

“Got it all right here.” Stiles turns and gestures to Scott, who comes forward with a folder full of papers. “All the case files, information from the bone marrow foundation, records of Jesse Pendleton’s stay in Kentucky – you want it, I’ve got it. I have the records of the prison’s purchase, and Chris has all the information he and Sam got there last night.”

“Give me a break, anyone with a printer could mock up some of that stuff,” Drake says, recovering.

Surprisingly, it’s Jim Stoddard who says, “There’s an easier way. Just get a DNA sample. We all have enough contacts in law enforcement that we can easily find out if Drake’s blood DNA matches his own, or this Trevor Hughes.” He looks at Drake and says, “Unless you’d have a problem with giving us a sample.”

Drake’s moment of hesitation is miniscule. He covers well. But they all see it. He’s trapped, and he can’t find a way out.

“Holy shit,” Mikael says. “You actually – this man saved your life and you repaid him for that by murdering his friend and framing him for it, all because you needed a dead body you could use as bait for the Arnelles. You unconscionable _bastard_.”

“This – you’re all taking this way out of context,” Drake says, trying to calm the waters.

“What _possible_ context could there be that would justify you murdering these three people?” Vanessa asks, looking unimpressed.

“All I’m saying is that you guys need to consider the source of this information,” Drake says. He gestures to Stiles and says, “This kid has destroyed more hunter families than I could ever think about doing. Look what he did to Gerard Argent, to the Gutierrez family. He’s making a habit of turning us against each other, of making sure people whose philosophies he doesn’t agree with get put out of business. And suddenly he shows up here with this rock solid case against me? Come on, guys, you know that this isn’t kosher.”

A few people are actually starting to nod, and Stiles is momentarily worried for how things are going to go. If he gives them a minute, they’ll remember that they can easily prove or disprove everything he’s said. But if Drake keeps talking, he might actually be able to sway them to his side.

“I just think we need to slow down, to talk about this – ” Drake continues, and then suddenly Wednesday throws her bouquet of flowers right in his face.

“Shut up!” she screams. “Shut up, shut up, just _shut the fuck up_!”

“Now, sugar – ”

“Stop calling me sugar!” Wednesday shouts. “I’m fucking sick of you calling me sugar and buying me dresses and then checking my phone and reading my email and threatening people I care about! You think you can talk your way out of anything, you bastard, but you’re going to have a hard time talking your way out of four inches of steel in your throat and that’s exactly what I’m going to put there if you say one more God damned word! You murdered my parents, you piece of shit, and then you attacked my people and hurt my family and strong-armed me into marrying your repulsive offspring!”

“Hey now – ” Marty says.

“You shut up, too!” Wednesday shouts at him. “I hate your fucking guts, with your casual misogyny and your patronizing bullshit and your stupid obsession with your stupid cars!” She whirls back to Drake. “Yeah, consider the source, Martin! You know who called Stiles here? I did. I called him up because he’s my friend and because he’s better than anyone I know at destroying hunters and I wanted you fucking destroyed! And you know what, I’m not one bit fucking ashamed of that, because what my mother taught me is that when you want something done right, you give it to the person best equipped to do it, so while I was here pretending to be sad and vulnerable and helpless, he was running rings around your egotistical ass! This is _my_ territory and Stiles has every right to be here and he can say whatever the fuck he wants at my fucking wedding! Which is off, by the way, because I would rather stick my tongue in a beehive than ever have your son lay his hands on me again!”

“Damn, girl,” Marty says, and he actually sounds a little bit hurt.

“All right, fine,” Drake says, and there’s a coldness in his voice that wasn’t there before. “You can all believe him if you want, I don’t care. And on that note, I’m leaving.”

Chris’ hand digs into Drake’s shoulder. “You aren’t going anywhere.”

“Is that what you think?” Drake asks. He shakes off Chris’ hand and gets to his feet. “I’ve got a small army of men in and around this house. What are you going to do to keep me here?”

Chris looks unimpressed. “You’ve got a small army of hired thugs. We’re _hunters_. And maybe you’ve never understood exactly what that means, but trust me, nobody in here is afraid of your guys.”

“Well, you should be,” Drake says, “because my guys have weapons and body armor, which none of you do.”

Moments later, there’s a solid thunk and there’s a knife in the wall right by his face. He freezes in place, then slowly looks at Allison.

“Please,” she says, twirling another around her fingers. “I’ve got knives for _days_ , Drake.”

“You little bitch,” Drake snarls.

Chris gives his shoulder another vicious squeeze. “That’s my daughter, Drake. Watch your mouth. We might not all be armed, but we’re still more than enough to take on any one of your men.”

“Well, let’s see how you fare when we have a hostage,” Drake sneers, and the man at his left suddenly lunges forward, moving right for Wednesday.

Wednesday doesn’t flinch. In one smooth move, she yanks off the detachable skirt that’s part of her wedding dress and whips it at the man’s face just as his gun is coming up. It blinds him, only for a moment, but long enough for her to duck to one side, outside his gun arm, and twist it around. She’s gotten the gun away from him before a second has passed and yanked his arm so far up behind his back that he lets out a little yelp of pain. He hits the ground with a solid thunk, and then Ray Parr is on him, holding him down.

“You were fucking saying, you arrogant piece of shit?” Wednesday snarls, marching forward with the gun still in her hand.

Drake is a little pale. “You, you don’t – ”

“Martin Drake,” Wednesday says, checking the chamber on the gun she’s just acquired. “You have been found guilty of the murders of Betty and Curtis Arnelle. By me. And everybody else in this room although their opinions are neither required or requested. The punishment is execution. Do you have any last words?”

“Marty, for God’s sake!” Drake appeals to his son. “Do something!”

Marty looks uncertainly between Wednesday and his father, then says, “Uh, no thanks, Dad. I think I know where this is going, and I see no reason to go down with the ship.”

“You self-serving, backstabbing coward – ”

Marty just gives a shrug. “I learned from the best, Dad.”

“That’s a no on the last words?” Wednesday says, and circles around so she’s behind Drake. “Okay then – ”

“Lucy, sugar, just wait half a – ”

Wednesday doesn’t wait. She pulls the trigger. Drake’s body jerks and then slumps forward. Both Chris and Julien flinch away involuntarily at the loud noise so close to them, and when they let him go, his body folds onto the ground. Wednesday pulls the trigger again. “And don’t call me sugar,” she snaps.

After a moment, she turns to the rest of the audience. “Let’s get a few things straight!” she shouts. “This is my territory and I will not allow interference with my affairs. And Drake’s territory is now my territory, because do you know what? I fucking deserve it.” She pauses and then turns to Julien. “I will, of course, return the Argent territory to your family.”

“Thanks,” Julien says.

“Secondly,” Wednesday continues, “all you people out there who sided with Drake, who thought I couldn’t handle things here, yes, I see you out there. Don’t think I don’t know who you are. I don’t want your fucking help. In fact, I feel like it would benefit all of you if you found places to live that aren’t on my territory. Just keep that in mind.

“Third and lastly, you should all know that now that I’ve ditched this pathetic slob,” she says, gesturing at Marty, who flinches a little, “I will be going back to my previous boyfriend. He is a werewolf with red hair and a cute butt. Let me count how many fucks I give about your opinion of this. It is zero! Not a single fuck is given! I will continue to date Calvin and if anyone so much as breathes funny in his direction, I will pull out your toenails with pliers.”

Wednesday stops and takes a deep breath. Stiles has to resist the urge to clap.

“On that note,” she says, “there’s a fucking party waiting for us and I see no reason not to attend it. It’s all been paid for, no sense in wasting it.”

“It’s what Martin would have wanted,” Stiles says solemnly.

“And I might not be able to have booze but I’m going to go out there and have a slice of fucking cake,” Wednesday says. She takes another deep breath. “Chris, Julien, would you do me a favor and see that Drake’s men are escorted off the premises?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Chris says.

“And I’ll take Marty upstairs and make sure he doesn’t get any ideas about taking off before we decide what to do with him,” Allison says with a charming smile. Marty gives a little grimace, but doesn’t protest. Nobody’s suggesting shooting him, so that seems like a pretty good deal. He turns and heads out the side door of the room, with Allison trailing behind.

Stiles gives Wednesday a smile and gestures to the aisle. “After you,” he says, and Wednesday marches down the aisle with her head held high.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congrats to the people who saw this pairing coming! =D
> 
> Thanks for reading, everybody! This has been a fun little installment. I hope you've enjoyed it!

The atmosphere in the back yard is moderately more festive than Stiles would have anticipated. They _had_ just murdered a man, after all, and although an argument could definitely be made that he had deserved it, it made Stiles’ stomach twist just a little bit. The other hunters aren’t really having the same problem. The band has been sent home, but someone had put on some music anyway. Marty Drake had an excellent stereo system and surprisingly good taste in music. The booze is flowing and there are enough appetizers to weigh down the Titanic.

And there are some good things happening, too. Stiles looks up as he hears a shout and sees Ray ushering Sketch through the crowd. He stands out, thanks to his flaming red hair, and the fact that he’s dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. That doesn’t seem to matter a bit to Wednesday, who surprises both Stiles and Sketch by throwing her arms around him and squeezing him tightly. Stiles can see the way her fingers are digging in as she clutches at the back of his shirt. Her face is squinched up like she’s trying not to cry, and Stiles remembers what his father had said at the beginning of this: even the hardest woman could fall in love.

Sketch pulls away a little, far enough to land a kiss on Wednesday’s mouth. Then he looks down at the baby bump between them. “Is – is that – ”

Wednesday nods, and this time a few tears do escape. “Yeah,” she says. “She’s ours.”

Sketch goes to his knees and presses his ear against Wednesday’s stomach. “I can hear her heartbeat,” he says, his voice hushed in awe. He stays there for a long time.

Since everything seems to be under control in that arena, Stiles goes to find himself some food. He hadn’t eaten much in the way of lunch, and – now that he’s thinking about it, he’s been so buzzed on Adderall for the pasty forty-eight hours that he can’t actually remember the last time he ate. He starts loading up a plate with hors d’oeuvres.

“Well done, Stiles,” Sally Stoddard’s voice says at his elbow, and he nearly drops shrimp all over the ground. “No, really, I mean it! I’m impressed.”

“That’s great, Sally,” Stiles says. He adds a few crab legs and then some chicken wings and goes looking for a starch. “Dare I ask how much of this you planned?”

“Not a bit!” Sally gives him innocent eyes and then makes an x over her heart. “Cross my heart. Martin Drake didn’t need my help to be a vicious, conniving bastard. I knew he was ready to take over Henry’s territory, but didn’t bother to encourage or stop him. And as for Lucy Arnelle, well.” She shrugs. “I figured she would either take care of it herself, or she wouldn’t.”

“I’m not sure I believe you,” Stiles says.

Sally makes a ‘tsk’ noise with her tongue. “Come on, now, Stiles. You know that if I was responsible, I’d be bragging about it. My uncle’s impressed with you, too, by the way.”

“Great,” Stiles says.

“Actually that’s a bad thing,” Sally says. “For you, at least. He’s wondering whether or not it would be worth it to quietly take care of you. Take heart, though; he’s decided against it. Uncle Jim doesn’t really care what people do on other territories, as long as they don’t come tell him what to do on his.”

“Uh huh,” Stiles says. “Is that why he showed us a fake prison?”

Sally grins, clearly delighted. “So you know about that! He’s convinced you’re still in the dark, but I’m not surprised. Yes, if you saw the real one, you’d probably have him taken out back and shot. It’s a nasty place. Though to be fair to my uncle, at least he just kills people at the end of it, instead of paying them off to go attack other territories. Credit where it’s due, hm?”

“Yeah, I’m all about that,” Stiles says. “So what have you got up your sleeve for me next?”

Sally just laughs. “That would be telling, wouldn’t it? Don’t worry, I’ll leave you alone while you’re at school. You’re more fun when you can devote your entire attention to things.” She picks up a scone and says, “See you at the Conclave, then?”

“I’m not invited,” Stiles reminds her.

“No, but you’ll be there all the same, won’t you?” she asks, and disappears into the crowd.

Stiles is so busy frowning after her that it takes him a minute before he realizes that someone else is frowning after her, too. Annika is standing by the wine and cheese table, scowling like mad in Sally’s direction. Stiles walks over to her and says, “What’s got you looking so pissed off?”

“Ugh, I hate her,” Annika says, her scowl deepening. “Jonas never stops talking about her.”

Stiles nearly chokes on a piece of crab. He’s surprised he doesn’t actually require the Heimlich maneuver. “That’s your brother’s girlfriend?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Annika says. “I guess they exchanged numbers at the Conclave. It was just long distance at first, you know, skypeing and stuff. Then they got into skype sex, and let me tell you, walking into the room and seeing my brother whacking off to that shirtless skank is going to haunt my nightmares for years.”

“Gross,” Stiles says, not because he doesn’t think guys shouldn’t jerk off or because he has a problem with skype sex – Erica would skin him if she caught him slut-shaming anyone – but because Jonas is quite possibly just as much of a psychopath as Sally is. He’s just more violent and less intelligent. “I guess I can sort of see them together. Must be a big deal, huh? Two big families.”

Annika nods and grimaces. “See, after the last Conclave . . . Dad started trying to be a home a lot more. He knew that he had kind of fucked up, and that as much as we were psycho freaks at the Conclave, we were trying to impress him, to make him look good in front of the other families. So he gave Great-Uncle Greger the boot and tried to be around more. I mean, our family has so much territory – a lot of the time he used to go straight from one hunt to another, without coming home in between. But now he always tries to make it home, even if it’s only for a night.”

“Sounds like it should have been good,” Stiles says.

“Yeah. And I thought it was. I mean, he started personally overseeing our training after, you know, we kind of got our asses handed to us. He was good about it though, I mean, he didn’t try to make us feel bad. He took responsibility for it, was like, ‘I haven’t been here so maybe you’re a little behind in some ways’. But Jonas, you know, he hated it. Every little criticism was just . . . I don’t know. He turned into an enormous dickhead. And I know that you thought he already was one, and he was, but this was just . . . he was getting out of control. He’d disappear for days at a time and refuse to tell our parents where he had been. He got arrested twice, once because he got pulled over for speeding and was an enormous ass to the cop, and once for armed robbery. That was, like, a _seriously_ big deal. He just walked into this video game store and decided to take whatever he wanted, and God help anyone who tried to stop him.

“My dad got the charges reduced and he only had to serve community service, but he was furious with Jonas and Jonas was just as furious with him. So around then was when he started dating Sally, and . . .” Annika grabs a glass of champagne and slams it back. “Dad thought that she was a bad influence on him. I mean, she’s such a vacuous twat, and she was encouraging him to, you know, be the bad boy. So he said they couldn’t see each other anymore, not even over skype. Jonas got pissed and just took off, stole the fucking plane, and flew to Massachusetts to see her. They shacked up in some hotel for, like, six weeks. Dad was _super_ pissed, and he got on the phone with Jim Stoddard, and Jim was pissed too, like, you think my niece is a bad influence on your son, well, I think he’s a horrible influence on my niece.”

“Yikes,” Stiles says, just letting her talk. She seems glad to be letting some of it out.

“So Jim cornered him and they sent him to stay with Ariah Nazario for a few months. You know, partly to toughen him up, and partly so he could get some real field experience but he and my dad could both cool down for a while.” She shrugs and reaches for another glass of champagne. “Then my dad got shot, and . . . things changed. Jonas came home, and he was less of a jerk. Dad agreed to let him see Sally as long as he finished his community service and stuck with the training.”

“That’s good,” Stiles says.

“Yeah. I’m glad they settled it and I guess I’m glad that he has a girlfriend,” Annika says, not looking glad at all. “I just wish it wasn’t her. She’s so . . . stupid, ugh.”

Stiles isn’t about to tell her that Sally is actually the opposite of stupid, and he has to wonder how much of all this drama took place with Sally’s active encouragement.

He’s about to say something else when Annika adds, “But I’m glad he’s home. He was just about ready to kill my dad when he left for Massachusetts,” and the connection hits Stiles like a ton of bricks.

 _“You are barking so far up the wrong tree with that one, you can’t even imagine,”_ Stella Jones had said about the attempt on Mikael Aronsson’s life.

Everyone had agreed that Ariah Nazario was probably behind it, and to a certain extent Stiles thinks she probably was involved, but that comment of Stella’s had always bothered him. Peter was the one who had said that maybe they were looking at it too narrowly, that they were assuming it was hunter politics when it could easily have been something more mundane. And what was more mundane than a child acting out against his father?

“Oh, hey, cake,” Annika says. “Fucking finally. Talk to you later, Stiles.”

Stiles is still standing there with his jaw slightly ajar when Derek comes over. He wraps an arm around Stiles’ waist and rubs his cheek over Stiles’ hair, thoroughly marking him while scowling at everyone else. “Your heartbeat skyrocketed,” he growls. “What happened?”

“Nothing, I – you can seriously differentiate my heartbeat from everyone else’s?” Stiles asks.

“Of course I can,” Derek says. “You’re my alpha.”

“Okay then,” Stiles says. “Nothing happened, just, Annika said something that got me thinking. I want to talk to Sally for a minute.”

“Why?” Derek asks.

“Because she loves to brag,” Stiles says. His theory seems sound, but he has to know that he’s right. Accusing Jonas outright would have ugly results, and even if has certain proof, he’s not sure how to go about it. Drake was a lot easier because everyone hated Drake. But Jonas is Mikael’s son, and Stiles doesn’t know how to tell Mikael that his own son tried to kill him.

Sally and Jonas are dancing to ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, and Stiles taps on Jonas’ shoulder. “Mind if I cut in?” he asks.

“Go fuck yourself,” Jonas replies.

Stiles walks away, but he isn’t surprised when Sally joins him on the edge of the crowd a few minutes later. “I thought you didn’t want to talk to me,” she says.

“I usually don’t,” Stiles says. “I was just wondering whose idea the attempt on Mikael’s life had been, yours or your boyfriend’s?”

Sally’s eyes go a little wide, and then she lets out a peal of laughter. “It was Jonas’ idea, but he didn’t really _mean_ it, not at first. Just, you know, the typical teenaged angst. ‘I’m so angry, I could kill him’ or ‘I should kill him for what he said to me’, et cetera. I got him on the right tracks, more or less. Of course, he still messed up. Poor Jonas. He’s so barely adequate at . . . anything. It really bothers him.”

“It didn’t occur to him that his father might be wearing body armor in a public place?” Stiles asks.

“I told him to go with a sniper and a head shot, but _no_ , he wanted his father to see it coming, if only for an instant.” Sally rolls her eyes.

“Is he going to try again?”

“Probably not,” Sally says. “Not until Mikael pisses him off again, at least. Ah, the spoiling of children by a father who has realized his mortality. It’s rather sweet, actually.”

“You’ve got issues, Sally.” Stiles walks away. He wants a piece of cake. He _deserves_ a piece of cake. So he will have a piece of cake. Actually, he’ll have two. He gets that and an iced tea and sits down in a circle of lawn chairs, as far away from Sally as he can manage. He’s just finishing up eating when ‘Wild Horses’ comes on, and obviously he and Derek _have_ to dance to that. Derek grumbles but allows himself to be tugged out onto the floor. Stiles twines his arms around Derek’s neck, rests his cheek against Derek’s shoulder, and feels some sense of safety return to the universe.

He could probably dance to the next song, which is ‘Single Ladies’, but Derek refuses. He’s saved from the pack when Chris walks over and says, “We’re going to go deal with Marty. Want to join?”

“Yes. Please,” Derek says, in a voice that suggests violence if he isn’t allowed to leave the reception soon.

“Sure, why not?” Stiles asks. The rest of the pack follows, primarily because they don’t want to be left alone with a batch of hunters, most of whom have been heavily consuming alcohol.

Marty is upstairs in his room, playing Call of Duty. He looks up when they come in and shuts the game off. “So are you guys going to keep me prisoner here forever?”

“Should we?” Wednesday asks.

“Hey, don’t blame this shit on me,” Marty says, raising his hands in surrender. “You think I wanted to go through with this? I fucking hate hunting, come on, I could’ve been a NASCAR driver by now, but no, my dad was obsessed with his stupid hunting schemes and Daddy gets what Daddy wants. Until, you know, someone shoots him in the head.”

“You didn’t want to marry Lucy?” Stiles asks, somewhat surprised.

“No offense, babe,” Marty says to Lucy, “but you’re really not my type. But Jesus you’re a persistent bitch. I couldn’t get rid of you no matter how much of a spectacular douchebag I was.” He sees more looks of surprise and says, “Seriously, did you guys think I’m really like that?”

There’s a long moment of awkward silence.

“Oooooookay,” Marty says. “I guess I should get credit for my acting chops, then.”

Wednesday huffs out a breath. “Congratulations,” she says. “You’re still an enormous piece of shit, but you’re not a murderer. So I guess that we don’t have to keep you prisoner forever.”

“Cool,” Marty says.

“Here’s what you _are_ going to do,” Wednesday says. “Your father’s net worth was about five hundred and fifty million dollars – ”

“Holy shit,” Scott says, nearly choking.

“ – and I know that you were his sole inheritor. So what you’re going to do is take ten million of that, and get the hell out of town. Buy yourself an island somewhere, I don’t fucking care. The rest of it, you’re going to use to establish a trust that you will make me the manager of.”

“I ain’t saying she’s a gold digger,” Marty sings.

“I don’t want your fucking money, Marty,” Wednesday snaps. “I’m going to use it to compensate the werewolves that have been kept in your father’s filthy prison, and their families. How many lives do you think he destroyed? And yeah, I’m going to keep some to finance my hunting enterprises. I’m not going to go out and buy diamonds and yachts, you fuckstick.”

“Yeah, but, ten million?” Marty asks. “That’s like, two percent of my father’s fortune. At least give me ten percent. Have a little sympathy. You had to put up with him for six months; I had to live with him for twenty years.”

It looks like Wednesday might punch him in the face, but she apparently decides it isn’t worth it. “Five percent.”

“Seven point five.”

“Fine, you son of a bitch. But I’m serious when I say to get gone.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Marty says.

Stiles clears his throat. It seems pretty unlikely that Marty will decide to mount some sort of vendetta, but he wants to be sure they’ve made it as unlikely as possible. “In fact, we’ll supervise the acquisition of some property in whatever far-away-from-here country you want. And then we’ll fly you there, and drop you off there. Then your face is going on every terror watch list, Interpol wanted list, and TSA bulletin board that I can get my hands on. If you ever try to enter this country again, you’re going to find yourself in a small room with a bunch of burly guys who are all very interested in strip searching you. Is that clear?”

Marty glances at him, and then nods. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Tropical paradise good, anal cavity search bad. I hear you. You’re gonna have to wait until after his will has been probated, but I’ll understand if you want me under house arrest ‘til then. Just leave me my Xbox and the number to Domino’s.”

Stiles glances at Wednesday. She nods. They’re both in agreement that it’s about as good as they’re going to get.

“What about the baby, though?” Marty asks, as if this is only now occurring to him.

Wednesday rolls her eyes. “It’s not even yours, Marty.”

Marty’s mouth sags open a little, and then closes. He appears to think about this for a long minute before saying, “Yep, okay, I walked right into that one, didn’t I. To be fair to me, if we have any interest in being fair, I figured Dad had swapped out your birth control. It didn’t occur to me that you might’ve gotten knocked up on your own.”

“Yeah, we’re done talking now,” Wednesday says, and turns and leaves the room without another word.

The others trail after her. Chris shuts the door after her and says he’ll make arrangements to make sure that Marty isn’t left alone before they can get everything settled. They also need to make plans to go up to the prison in West Virginia and make sure that everyone is released and treated for any injuries they might have, and that they’re reunited with their packs and/or families. There’s a lot they need to do, but at this point Stiles doesn’t need to be involved. He’s done what Wednesday asked him to do. Everything from here on out is hunter business.

Wednesday leans against the wall, looking exhausted for several long moments. “You okay?” Stiles asks her.

“Yeah. I just need to lie down for a bit.” She inhales slowly and then exhales even more slowly. “Will you do me a favor and take me home?”

“Sure,” Stiles says. “You want a hug?”

Wednesday gives him a look. Then she says, “Thanks, but . . . I might actually fall apart, and I’d prefer not to do that in front of everyone.”

“Okay.” Stiles starts down the stairs with the others behind him. He makes a few quick arrangements to meet the others back at the hotel, then he and Derek drive Wednesday, Sketch, and Izzy back to the Arnelle house. The ride passes mostly in silence. Izzy is leaning into her sister’s embrace, and Sketch can’t keep his eyes off Wednesday’s pregnant stomach.

“Hey, I’ll come see you tomorrow, okay?” Stiles says, as he pulls up outside the house.

“Sure,” Wednesday says. Sketch opens the car door and gets out, extending a hand to her. She takes it, but then says to Stiles. “Thanks. For everything. You know.”

“Hey, that’s what friends are for,” Stiles says.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Nobody wants to stay at the Biltmore, even with Drake now dead. They check out and go back to the Hyatt. After some discussion, Stiles decides to stay in town for a few extra days, just to make sure that everything is taken care of. Derek will stay with him, and the others will leave the next day so they can be back in class on Monday.

Stiles wants to stay long enough to make sure that everything goes smoothly with the werewolves being released from the prison. He thinks it might help some if he and Derek are there, since the werewolves are going to be distrustful of hunters, with good reason. So by noon on Sunday, most of the pack is on a plane back to California.

With nothing urgent to attend to, Stiles checks in with Chris, who says they’re handling things, and then devotes his attention to the school work that Lydia has picked up for him. They have dinner at Ray Parr’s house. He offers to cook, and Ray says, “Don’t mind if you do,” so he makes his classic lasagna for everyone.

He’s surprised when Wednesday shows up, not because she’s there, but because she’s returned to her former look. Her hair has been cut short and dyed black again, and she’s wearing heavy eyeliner and dark lipstick. She’s dressed in a maroon tank top over a black mesh shirt, and black jeans and combat boots.

“Lookin’ good, baby mama!” Sketch chirps, bouncing out of his chair to greet her.

She gives him a look. “Call me that again and I’ll staple your balls to the floor,” she says, and Sketch just laughs and kisses her.

“How’s things back at the old homestead?” Stiles asks her, dishing her up a plate.

Wednesday shrugs. “Gram’s upset. She’s glad Martin’s dead, and glad that I got the territory back, but she doesn’t like Sketch and she doesn’t like the fact that my baby might be a werewolf. I told her that unless she planned to start campaigning against interracial marriage, she needed to take a step back. Now she’s mad at me, but she knows I’m right. She’ll get over it.”

“That’s . . . good, I guess?” Stiles says.

“I spent most of the afternoon with Julien and Sam, and Jim Stoddard,” she says, “which might account for my temper. Sam is taking Henry’s old territory, and I’ve got mine and Martin’s, but both Jim and Julien promised to support me _without_ strings attached, if I needed the help.”

“I’m surprised Stoddard agreed to that,” Stiles says. “He’s not a giving sort of guy.”

“No, but he can see which way the wind is blowing,” Wednesday says. “If I actually need help, he’ll probably find some reason he can’t give it to me. Whatever. Listen, you don’t have to stick around. I know that you’ve got classes and everything.”

“I’m taking a red-eye back tomorrow night,” Stiles says. “And I’ll sleep on the plane so I can make classes Tuesday. Don’t worry about it.”

Wednesday purses her lips, then says. “Okay. Since you’re staying . . . I know I’ve asked a lot from you and I maybe wasn’t as nice about it as I could have been. But could you do me one more favor while you’re here?”

“Shoot,” Stiles says.

“Will you be my best man?”

Stiles grins. “Sure!”

Wednesday actually flushes pink. “Normally there’s, uh, a three-day waiting period after you get your marriage license, but, one of the pack actually works at city hall so they’re going to clear it for me. I just want, you know. God, this is stupid. I want to marry that dork, like, right now.”

“I definitely want to be there for that,” Stiles says, and Wednesday scowls at him.

So that’s how he finds himself standing at city hall at nine fifteen the next morning, with a busy day ahead of him and a lot of werewolves to rescue. Wednesday is wearing a lacy black dress, and the same combat boots from the day before. Sketch is in a T-shirt and jeans, and he’s got a clip-on tie.

“Just the short version,” Wednesday says, glaring at the justice of the peace.

“Do you have the rings?” the woman asks. She seems completely unfazed by their attire and by Wednesday’s attitude.

“Got ‘em right here!” Sketch pulls a box out of his pocket. To Stiles, in a voice that’s probably supposed to be quiet, he confides, “Cheap as shit, too. We’ll replace ‘em later.”

“Good plan,” Stiles says. He reaches out for Derek’s hand, curling his fingers around it. Derek glances over at him and leans over absently to rub his cheek against Stiles’ hair.

“Do you, Lucy Arnelle, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for – ”

“I do,” Wednesday interrupts.

“I’mma let her say the whole thing,” Sketch says, again sotto voce, and Wednesday wrinkles her nose at him.

Now it’s clear that the JP is trying not to laugh. “Do you, Calvin Maguire, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish, until death do you part?”

“I do!” Sketch exclaims, loudly enough that his voice echoes.

“By the power invested in me by the state of Kentucky, I pronounce you man and wife,” the JP says. “You may kiss the bride.”

“She may kiss me!” Sketch says, grinning, and Wednesday swoops in to press her mouth against his. Stiles uses his phone to take a quick picture.

“Just sign here and here – ” the JP says, getting the paperwork organized. “Do you need a name change form?”

“No,” Wednesday says.

“Hells yes,” Sketch says, and Wednesday narrows her eyes at him. “I’m taking your name, aren’t I? Gotta be Arnelles around here.”

Wednesday wrinkles her nose again. “You can if you want,” she says, and Sketch laughs at her. They sign the paperwork and do the name change form, and then they’re leaving the courthouse. “Good, that’s done,” she says, sounding relieved. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, so let’s go.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stiles is exhausted by the time they get to the airport, and he dozes through the safety briefing. They’re in first class, because Derek always flies in first class. Derek hates to fly, period, but first class makes it a little more bearable.

They’re somewhere over middle America, and the cabin is dim and silent, and Stiles is staring at Derek while he works on a picture of Wednesday and Sketch at their wedding. “Hey,” Stiles murmurs. “You wanna get married?”

Derek glances over at him, and a slow smile spreads across his face. “Yeah,” he says.

“Mmkay.” Stiles yawns and readjusts himself so he can lean against Derek. “Probably should wait until I’m out of college, though. And we can’t just do a quick thing at city hall. Do you have any idea what my grandmother would do to me?”

Derek laughs quietly. “If you let her get involved, it’ll be the wedding of the century.”

“No, that’ll be Scott and Allison’s. Nothing we do will top theirs, trust me.”

“Maybe your grandmother can plan theirs and we can sneak out the back and steal the officiant for five minutes.”

“Hey, that’s not a bad plan,” Stiles says, chortling.

There are a few moments of silence.

“You really want to get married?” Derek asks.

Stiles blinks, waking up a bit. “Yeah. Don’t . . . don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do, I just – I know we’re not exactly, you know, traditional, so it wasn’t the sort of thing that I really thought you might want for us.”

“Eh, who needs tradition?” Stiles says. He looks over at Derek and says, “I do plan to, you know, have you and hold you and love you and cherish you, so, as far as I’m concerned we fit the marriage bill pretty well.”

Derek is flushing pink up to the tips of his ears. “Well, when you put it that way,” he mutters.

Stiles leans over so he can press his cheek into Derek’s shoulder. “I don’t think there’s any reason to try to be something we’re not,” he says. “I like us just the way we are. But I would also like us a lot if we were married. So that’s a thing we should do.”

“Okay,” Derek says quietly.

“Okay,” Stiles says, and yawns. A few minutes later, he’s sound asleep in Derek’s arms.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [For Better or for Hearse [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11912334) by [Opalsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalsong/pseuds/Opalsong)




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